Affluent Workers Revisited

An analysis of the social and political perspectives of the British working class during the decade of Thatcherism. It re-evaluates the findings of the 1960s study, the "Affluent Workers" series, conducted by John Goldthorpe and his team. Devine concludes that rather than holding beliefs about politics and society based on the individual (as the earlier study suggested), the 1980s working class shares both a communal identity and a dissatisfaction with the unfair distribution of monetary rewards in Britain. Features of the analysis include interviews with Vauxhall car workers and their wives in Luton. The author examines the motivations, processes and consequences of geographical mobility amongst manual workers, and explores working-class lifestyles and the extent to which they may be described as privatized or communal. She also discusses different aspects of people's daily lives - sociability with relatives and friends, conjugal roles, leisure, material aspirations and politics. This book is designed for undergraduate and graduate students on courses in class analysis and social change in Britain, and also for sociologists studying the sociology of modern Britain.
Fiona Levine is co-author of "Women into Engineering and Science: Employers' Policies and Practices"