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in structural terms as a process than as something which related to their individual
identity and they eluded seeing themselves in class terms. Yet, while class is evaded
at one level, it is a category which is still necessarily evoked in order to describe
people's life narrative. In this way, Savage argues that his data demonstrates the
'individualization of class identity' (Savage 2000b, 113):
class is salient in constructing an idea of difference, not in terms of defining a class which
one belongs to. Very few people indicated that they had a sense of belonging to a class
with a strong collective identity. Those with ambiguous class identities defined their class
in terms of who they were not. Even those respondents who had a strong sense of class
identity defined class membership in largely individualized terms, as a personal statement
of who they were (Savage 2000b, 113).
Asking people to consider class is a way of getting people to 'place' themselves
in differential terms, which is not always a comfortable process. Indeed, to widen
the point, what Characterises the empirical studies undertaken by Savage on class
identities is that what matters to people is that they wish to be seen as 'ordinary';
being able to regard oneself as average, 'OK', 'proper', just 'ordinary' mattered far
more to people than being able to classify themselves in class terms. In this sense
class was significant because it threatened to contaminate claims to being 'ordinary'.
Yet since ordinariness could only be claimed as a result of relational comparison in
class terms, class came back into the conversation as a necessary descriptor. Class
locations, for Savage's respondents, acted as default descriptors - necessary as
something people wanted to exist in between. Interestingly, even in Savage's (2005)
more recent secondary reading of the Affluent Worker Study he found themes of
'ordinariness, hesitancy and individuality' in the respondents' accounts of class.
Most of the workers did not think of class in terms of occupational categories, rather
class was related to ideas about individuality and authenticity (2005, 938). There
was no shame in working-class identity for the respondents; rather, being ordinary
was a way of refuting both privileged and stigmatised positions into being 'normal',
'authentic', having 'natural attributes' without any pretensions to social distinction,
in a way which afforded them the means to lead their lives as they chose (ibid.)
Narratives of class identification based on notions of 'us' and 'them', across
three groups living in a Southern English town, form the basis of an empirical
study conducted by Southerton (2002). Drawing on Bourdieu's (1986) metaphors
of capital, Southerton measured each group's volume of economic, cultural and
social resources in three geographical locations in the new town of Yate. Using
these categories, he was able to examine how his subjects identified themselves as
relating to class based groups according to collective lifestyle consumption practices
of '“what is” and “what is not” for “Us”' (2002, 172). Southerton asserts however,
that the consumption of symbolic goods is not the only medium through which
people make identifications. Drawing on Jenkins (1996) he argues that collective
perceptions of the contextual use of social practices, enables people to formulate
boundaries between similarity and inclusion - 'Us'; and difference and exclusion
- 'Them'. Boundaries relate to identification and (dis)identification because they
signal the end of shared practice and the start of difference. By investigating how
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