The Underclass

Thinking Allowed

BBC

Society & Culture, Science

4.4 • 997 Ratings

🗓️ 6 April 2022

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The ‘Underclass’: Laurie Taylor explored a vexed concept which has engaged social scientists, philanthropists, journalists, policy makers and politicians. He’s joined by Loic Wacquant, Professor of Sociology at the University of California Berkeley, and author of a magisterial study which traces the rise and fall of a scarecrow category which, he argues, had a lemming effect on a generation of scholars of race and poverty, obscuring more than it illuminated. They're joined by Baroness Ruth Lister, Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at Loughborough University, who charts the way in which the notion of an underclass travelled to the UK, via the New Right sociologist, Charles Murray. She describes its impact on the debate about 'welfare' dependency, across the political spectrum, and argues for a 'politics of renaming' one which accords respect and recognition to people who experience poverty.

Producer: Jayne Egerton

Transcript

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0:00.0	Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, the Science of
0:07.0	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.
0:30.3	BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts.
0:36.7	This is a Thinking Loud Podcasts from the BBC and for more details and much, much more about thinking aloud, go to our website at BBC.co.uk.
0:47.6	Hello and welcome to what I learn with well an uneasy mixture of intellectual pleasure and aging apprehension will be the
0:56.2	24th year of thinking aloud.
0:59.7	And as our regular listeners will know, there are not many areas of life which have been immune from our sociological inquiries.
1:07.0	I can readily recall discussions on love and romance, fitness and fatness, the social history of waste serial killers skateboarding menswear
1:15.6	Christmas television teenage bedrooms heavy metal music dance hall zoos and even
1:22.0	why England fails at football. But so far at least we have not
1:26.3	encouraged social scientists to bring their heavy conceptual apparatus to bear
1:31.6	upon the content of popular songs, although many such songs can
1:36.0	readily reinforce and even determine our view of the world around us. I mean
1:42.0	consider this moving lyric.
1:45.0	And a hungry little boy with the running nose plays in the street as a cold wind blows and
1:51.0	the gator. The Ghetto And his hunger burns.
1:55.0	And his hunger burns.
	...

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