Publications
Neighbourhood, family and home: the working class experience in mid-twentieth century Brighton , by Benjamin Jones, 2008 at Sussex University (Ph.D. thesis)
Abstract:This thesis focuses on the working class in Brighton in the period c.1920-1970. I argue that despite rising living standards and increasing mobility rates (among men) classes remained culturally and spatially distinct. While working and middle class lifestyles converged somewhat, class differences were maintained and classes themselves reproduced through the uneven accumulation of economic and cultural capital. Foregrounding the analysis of life histories, class processes are seen to work structurally and biographically; shaping life chances and subjectivities. While work is conceived as significant in configuring social trajectories I demonstrate the degree to which occupational experiences intersect with domestic, familial, associative and neighbourhood cultures to mould social identities. I further investigate how class intersects with gender and generation to mediate experience, and evaluate the relationship between experience, discourse and memory in the formation of accounts of the past.