Non-Networking Graduates; Race and Consumption
Thinking Allowed
BBC
4.4 • 997 Ratings
🗓️ 30 July 2014
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Race & consumption - Laurie Taylor talks to Ben Pitcher, Senior Lecturer at the University of Westminster, about the ways in which racial meaning is produced in everyday acts of consumption. From the depiction of 'red Indians' by children's authors to the wearing of Bob Marley T shirts and the enthusiasm for 'ethnic' street food; our ideas of race are made and re-made across the terrain of contemporary culture. They're joined by Lola Young, Crossbench Peer and former Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Middlesex. Also, Jessica Abrahams, graduate student at the University of Cardiff, explores working class students' refusal to use networks and contacts as a route to career advancement.
Producer: Jayne Egerton.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, |
| 0:06.0 | the Science of Happiness Podcast. |
| 0:08.0 | For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want |
| 0:14.4 | to share that science with you. |
| 0:16.1 | And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley. |
| 0:19.4 | I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that |
| 0:25.4 | calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:29.7 | This is a Thinking Loud Podcast from the BBC and for more details in our terms of use and |
| 0:37.0 | much, much more about thinking aloud, go to our website at BBC.co. UK. |
| 0:45.0 | Hello. My father had a number of well-developed |
| 0:49.0 | aversions. He thoroughly disliked God and all his alleged works had no time at all for international cuisine, foreign muck, and positively detested the Freemasons. |
| 1:01.0 | This last aversion was based on the belief that it was his failure to join the masons who predominated in the upper echelons of the company for which he worked that had cost him his job. |
| 1:11.0 | It was for this reason that he always urged me to aim for a position where |
| 1:14.3 | success at exams and tests counted more than social connections, where what |
| 1:19.8 | you know, Lawrence, counts for more than who you know. Well I suppose back in those days he was |
| 1:25.0 | much in tune with those other naive meritocratic optimists who thought that ability would |
| 1:29.5 | eventually triumph over nepotism and networking. But he failed to recognize the sheer variety of ways |
| 1:36.2 | in which the middle class could overturn or subvert any such egalitarian hopes. Here's Social |
| 1:42.0 | Anthropologist Jillian Evans on Radio 4's analysis. |
| 1:45.0 | What interests me is what happens to those who fail at school. |
| 1:49.0 | Their trajectory in is to make sure that a failure in conventional academic life will still reproduce middle class status. |
| 2:07.0 | I begin to see being middle class as a kind of apprenticeship. |
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