Class, Geography and

There has been somewhat of a resurgence of interest in class across disciplines, for example, in feminist theory, sociology, and geography. In the United States, there have been several rich, ethnographic accounts of the continued effect of social class, as it intersects with other social positions, all of which challenge the popular myth of North America as a classless society. In the United Kingdom, there has been a stronger tradition of researching class, moving away from initial economist models to more cultural approaches that aim to uncover the interconnected subjective, material, and spatial components of class. The geographical intersection with class emphasizes the ways in which class literally takes place, on and in the landscape. Classed geographies are embodied in individuals’ sense of place, in our feelings of belonging, and in our everyday identifications. They are materially enacted in the resources and opportunities that are available or denied to us, and here class division alludes to the stratification within this system. For example, we may see ourselves “located” in terms of our ability or inability to move neighborhoods, to access leisure facilities, to change employment, or to travel abroad. We may position ourselves as alike or dissimilar to our peers, and with an increasingly globalized reference system, different scales of comparison can be mobilized across time and place. Class is often seen as relevant to our uptake of and movements within space, from the everyday level of which neighborhood we live in and on what street, and the restaurants and art galleries we may or may not frequent, to a broader [Page 419]sense of globalized flows in the labor market and the division between the “global rich” and the “global poor.” Yet defining class becomes difficult in a climate of supposed classlessness, where class inequalities are thought of as increasingly complex or nonexistent. Rather than moving away from class, many continue to research its fixity and its ability to fix—to deny opportunities in a new global market place.