The racialised and classed constitution of English village life |
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Authors: | Katharine Tyler |
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Affiliation: | University of Manchester, UK |
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Abstract: | This article explores ethnographically the ‘village’ as a stage for the enactment and reproduction of a racialised set of white middle-class social and moral values. To do this I draw upon interview material with middle-class whites who live in a suburban ‘village’ on the border of rural Leicestershire and urban Leicester in England. I explore the way in which my co-conversationalists reflexively and imaginatively defend their area's ‘village’ identity through a discourse that ‘others’ its wealthy Asian residents. Although these raced others have achieved economic parity with the more affluent wealthy white middle-class residents, they are imagined to lack the ‘proper’ middle-class values of respectability and decorum, which are associated with the traditional white rhythms of English village life. |
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Keywords: | Middle class white Asian English village |
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