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Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class

by Owen Jones - £8.99  Verso Books (2016)
paperback    ISBN 13: 9781784783778 | ISBN 10: 1784783773

A compelling investigation into the myth and reality of working-class life in contemporary Britain. In modern Britain, the working class has become an object of fear and ridicule. From Little Britain's Vicky Pollard to the demonization of Jade Goody, media and politicians alike dismiss as feckless, criminalized and ignorant a vast, underprivileged swathe of society whose members have become stereotyped by one, hate-filled word: chavs.
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In this groundbreaking investigation, Owen Jones explores how the working class has gone from �salt of the earth� to �scum of the earth.� Exposing the ignorance and prejudice at the heart of the chav caricature, one based on the media�s inexhaustible obsession with an indigent white underclass, he portrays a far more complex reality. Moving through Westminster�s lobbies and working-class communities from Dagenham to Dewsbury Moor, Jones reveals the increasing poverty and desperation of communities made precarious by wrenching social and industrial change, and all but abandoned by the aspirational, society-fragmenting policies of Thatcherism and New Labour. The chav stereotype, he argues, is used by governments as a convenient figleaf to avoid genuine engagement with social and economic problems, and to justify widening inequality.
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Based on a wealth of original research, and wide-ranging interviews with media figures, political opinion-formers and workers, Chavs is a damning indictment of the media and political establishment, and an illuminating, disturbing portrait of inequality and class hatred in modern Britain.

This updated edition includes a new chapter exploring the causes and consequences of the UK riots in the summer of 2011.

(Price & availability last checked: November 2016)

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In booklists: Politics of Modern Britain, Working Class Lives, Art and Culture, Class,
In categories: Politics & Philosophy, Ireland, Scotland & Wales, Society, Welfare, Justice & the State,