Simone Varriale

“A Problem with the Person”: Class Blindness and the Reproduction of Social Class Inequality - Qualitative Sociology In this paper I introduce and explicate the concept of “class blindness,” and show how it works to obscure and justify class inequality even in a small community in which social divisions are well recognized. Similar to the concept of color-blind racism, class blindness is a discursive strategy to erase and minimize class privilege and the social processes by which class inequality is created and perpetuated. Denial of these processes, and the social-structural roots of class advantage and disadvantage, undermines efforts to effectively address societal problems born of social class inequality. I show how class blindness allows those with privilege to police their social positions and secure resource hoarding within a community while holding the disadvantaged personally responsible for their struggles. I further describe how class blindness allows advantaged individuals to express concern about social problems including poverty and inequality in the abstract, while acting in ways that contribute to its perpetuation on the micro and the macro levels. This qualitative case study, based in 84 interviews and 10 months of participant observation with individuals across the class spectrum, illustrates the processes that contribute to the reproduction of social inequality even among those whose ideological stances include commitment to its reduction.

This looks great: “A Problem with the Person”: Class Blindness and the Reproduction of Social Class Inequality

YouTube video by Underworld Underworld - Push Upstairs

Rediscovering this great track & album youtu.be/W3Ud0UG7JbQ?...

How working-class culture became an elite game From Nigel Farage's pints of ale to Giorgia Meloni's tomato selfies, how are working-class tastes weaponised by the leaders of far-right political parties?

“The far-right’s emphasis on culture conveniently obscures economic inequalities between different factions of the working- and lower-middle class: everyone becomes a ‘lad at the pub’” – @simov.bsky.social in our latest blog post #LSEInequalitiesBlog

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How working-class culture became an elite game From Nigel Farage's pints of ale to Giorgia Meloni's tomato selfies, how are working-class tastes weaponised by the leaders of far-right political parties?

I wrote a blog about how far-right leaders use ordinary tastes & 'working-class' identifications as political weapons (with some extra focus on Meloni, her cultural politics & policies). Plus other considerations about the 'political economy' of cultural taste blogs.lse.ac.uk/inequalities...

How working-class culture became an elite game From Nigel Farage's pints of ale to Giorgia Meloni's tomato selfies, how are working-class tastes weaponised by the leaders of far-right political parties?

I wrote a blog about how far-right leaders use ordinary tastes & 'working-class' identifications as political weapons (with some extra focus on Meloni, her cultural politics & policies). Plus other considerations about the 'political economy' of cultural taste blogs.lse.ac.uk/inequalities...

How working-class culture became an elite game From Nigel Farage's pints of ale to Giorgia Meloni's tomato selfies, how are working-class tastes weaponised by the leaders of far-right political parties?

How is cultural taste used as a political weapon? @simov.bsky.social argues that far-right leaders give public performances of working-class tastes as part of a conscious political strategy. What does this reveal? And what does it conveniently obscure? #LSEInequalitiesBlog

🔗 buff.ly/IRzaJJI

This looks really interesting, 'Expansive Vision: Re-thinking Race and Class Divides in the French Banlieue' muse.jhu.edu/article/948153

A fantastic project on ex-industrial towns in the UK which challenges the notion of 'left behind' by focusing on new forms of economic exploitation and political expropriation two-towns.common-wealth.org

The other implication is that talking about migrants & minorities as human beings is a middle class soft sentimentalism, so no need to engage with the contents of the white paper. Hence why not simply vote for Reform? It's the perfect performative class politics party

Apparently the Blue Labour take on the white paper is 'fine, but Starmer doesn't look like a working class bloke, it won't work'. It's a bizarre argument for people claiming they care about economic inequality (for whom? Britons looking like a Ken Loach character?) 1/2

📢📢 Upcoming ECF regional event at Newcastle University 📢📢

Academia Across Borders: Experiences and Challenges of International Academics in the UK

13 May 2025 (10AM – 15:50)

The event is free to attend but registration is required.

britsoc.co.uk/events/key-b...

Great to present with Afsana Hamidy on a panel at the @britsoci.bsky.social Race, Ethnicity & Migration Theme! Really thought-provoking work from co-panelists @simov.bsky.social @sazpaps.bsky.social and Anya Ovcharenko

This is what in Naples is now called 'contemporary' pizza (fluffier crust, lighter dough), costed only 8 euros because despite touristification you can still get enormous/delicious sourdough pizzas at 6-8 euros in Naples

www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblo...

FYI, Israel is bombing Gaza again

All papers in the special section on Palestine in the latest issue of @sociologicalreview.bsky.social are open access and vital reads ❤️

Against culture? Class analysis, strategic essentialism and methodological nationalism after Beverley Skeggs’ Formations of Class and Gender - Simone Varriale, 2025 Beverley Skeggs’ first book (Formations of Class and Gender [FoC&G]) has been central to the study of class and culture, pushing it towards a more sustained con...

I wrote a thing about why 'cultural' class analysis is badly equipped for challenging the cosplaying of working class culture by the far right & why working class formations are best conceptualised as multi-status.

Part of a great SI on Beverley Skeggs' work: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

OUT NOW: in the new issue of The Sociological Review journal, we reassess Bev Skeggs' acclaimed Formations of Class and Gender.

journals.sagepub.com/toc/SOR/73/2/

@jolittler.bsky.social @michaelacbenson.bsky.social @simov.bsky.social @asiyaislam.bsky.social @tellynelly.bsky.social #OpenAccess

Against culture? Class analysis, strategic essentialism and methodological nationalism after Beverley Skeggs’ Formations of Class and Gender - Simone Varriale, 2025 Beverley Skeggs’ first book (Formations of Class and Gender [FoC&G]) has been central to the study of class and culture, pushing it towards a more sustained con...

I wrote a thing about why 'cultural' class analysis is badly equipped for challenging the cosplaying of working class culture by the far right & why working class formations are best conceptualised as multi-status.

Part of a great SI on Beverley Skeggs' work: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Having got into sociology in the 2010s, there isn't a single conference I attended that wasn't about crisis, structures in flux, accelerations, collapse etc. Maybe in 2025 we can change to something like 'iterations of imperial capitalism: annual update'

My mind is still in Christmas mood because I'm reading in Italian (still finishing the books I got during the break)

Research Fellow Ref: 40025 (Fixed Term) - Job page - University of Sussex Job Search

📢Come work with me! 3 year postdoc on my new @LeverhulmeTrust project exploring how the second generation establish a sense of worth and belonging in professional workplaces in the UK - DL 5 Feb, please share jobs.sussex.ac.uk/job/8450715f...

Hopefully post/meta irony dies with millennials

My Santa is both antiracist and anticlassist

Sociology in the Times of Genocide: call for expressions of interest Contribute to a forthcoming Special Section in The Sociological Review journal

CfP from @sociologicalreview.bsky.social:
In the face of the genocide in Gaza, how can we mobilise our sociological imaginations to “envision radical alternatives” and work towards “the future we wish to see”?
thesociologicalreview.org/announcement...

Message in a bottle

Question for academics, how long does it normally take between article submission and the article being assigned to an editor? I've waited 1-2 weeks in the past, but it's approaching a month for something submitted recently. Should I write to the editors?

Watching Boybands Forever on BBC & this is the salient point. Boy bands in 90s multicultural Britain needed to be white. One black guy was allowed but had to shave his head (Blue). Five black guys (Damage) were refused magazine covers because 'black people don't sell' & did badly in the charts

On the concept of the pluriverse in Walter Mignolo and the European New Right - Contemporary Political Theory Today, the ‘pluriverse’ is considered to be a radical new concept capable of decolonising political thought. However, it is not only decolonial scholarship that has taken up the concept of the plurive...

Promising read: 'this schema ... misapprehends imperialism as a form of epistemic domination geared purely towards homogenisation, rather than as a set of material relationships that also produce (e.g. racial, sexual, and class) difference' link.springer.com/article/10.1...

UN Special Committee finds Israel’s warfare methods in Gaza consistent with genocide, including use of starvation as weapon of war NEW YORK (14 November 2024) – Israel’s warfare in Gaza is consistent with the characteristics of genocide, with mass civilian casualties and life-threatening conditions intentionally imposed on Palest...

Intro #

And yes, I post about Israel’s genocide in Gaza too

Free Palestine! 🇵🇸

UN Special Committee finds Israel’s warfare methods in Gaza consistent with genocide, including use of starvation as weapon of war
www.ohchr.org/en/press-rel...