Working-class Images of Society

This work is based on David Lockwood's argument that men's perception of the wider society will vary according to the work and community milieux in which they live out their daily lives. The book is concerned with how, in a stratified industrial society, people form mental representations of that structure. The book offers six empirical papers considering the social imagery of miners, ship-building, agricultural and textile workers, and unskilled factory workers. These are followed by five contributions which examine the methodological problems of the study of class imagery. In the concluding section, the nature of proletarian traditionalism and radicalism in Britain is discussed.