Saturday

Barnes Philosophy Club present Royal Institute of Philosophy talk, 'Class, Identity and Alienation' given by Dr Neil Williams Tuesday 10 March 2020


 Last evening at the BPC



There were some good stories from the floor too !  Not of class in the same way as in England but in New Zealand, in Hungary, and a story not of class but maybe of priviledge.  Interestingly Dr Neil Williams showed how complex the notion of class is illustrated from both the internalisation of the self as well as external circumstances
 Neil meeting the folk of the club ... and some relaxing ...




Some researching on the Phone !








Some like advertising the club


and ...

 Some love cooking for the club too !!

Meet Vicky the OSO Catering Manager and her husband









The evening was very interesting and made accessible and fun by our
Speaker:  Dr Neil Williams University of Roehampton


In this talk, I am interested in exploring the exact nature of social class, and the role that our social class plays in allowing us to operate comfortably within certain social spaces. In particular, I will focus on experiences of social mobility, and in challenging the modern assumption that moving to a higher socio-economic group is always an unalloyed good. In fact, I will suggest, when we examine the experiences of those who have been ‘upwardly mobile’ in this way, we typically find them pervaded with a sense of profound alienation. Even when they have – by all objective markers – attained socio-economic success, the socially mobile are haunted by what cultural critic Mark Fisher describes as ‘‘[the] sense of not belonging there, of being intruders’ (Fisher, 2013). After presenting and analysing an illustrative range of these experiences, I will argue that to take them seriously we must provide an account of class which places an emphasis on class identity, rather than an account based solely on socio-economic conditions. To end, I will present my own account of class identity in terms of an innate sense of inferiority and superiority.



Chair:  Dr Barbara Underwood