International Journal of Epidemiology 2003;32:675-676
© International Epidemiological Association 2003
Book Review |
A Phenomenology of Working Class Experience.
SJ Charlesworth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 312, £16.95 ISBN: 0-521-659159.
This book presents a strongly theorized ethnographic analysis of aspects of the experience and lifestyle of working class people in the South Yorkshire town of Rotherham. The raison d’être for the study is Charlesworth’s passionately held belief that the university-based social sciences are not only cut off, in geographical and social space, from working class life but increasingly demonstrate a lack of intellectual interest in it and, to a degree, reinforce a wider ‘class racism’ which systematically devalues it. Charlesworth belongs to the community he writes about and pulls no punches in his response to this ‘class racism’. From the acknowledgements of the book, where he describes in a bitter tone his own feelings of alienation whilst at university, claiming to have completed his study ‘in spite of’ Cambridge, through to the conclusion, the book is driven by a strong affective sense of injustice. Charlesworth’s overriding aim, however, is to understand and render understandable to the academic world, the nature of working class experience, and in particular the nature of that experience in the conditions of the present, where the decline of traditional manufacturing industries and the ‘flexibilization’ of labour have undermined many of the traditional supports of working class culture and community. In the final chapter Charlesworth denies that the book is about change, claiming that what he describes is a more or less permanent state of working class being. This may be true of some of what he says, but it is difficult to dissociate much of his analysis from the changes in the infrastructure of Rotherham that he describes; changes which his analysis identifies as a source of anomie, alienation, and the experience of loss. For all of these reasons the study is very important. It is a powerful, literary as much as scientific, account of forgotten communities; communities whose sources of both physical survival and self-respect have been taken away from them, and who are struggling in different ways to cope with that.
At times the account seems contradictory. Charlesworth writes, for example, that solidarity is all that his community has left, but then claims also that solidarity and community have broken down. However, this perhaps accurately captures the contradictory nature of the experience of life in a community under siege.
The analysis is very strongly theorized. Indeed, it is arguably as much an exploration of theory using data, as an exploration of data using theory. The theory in question comprises a cluster of writers whose work overlaps in different ways. Pierre Bourdieu is the key inspiration, followed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, with considerable input also from Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Charles Taylor (not to forget DH Lawrence and Toni Morrison). From a theoretical point of view, the way in which Charlesworth brings these theories into play, together, is very important and impressive. They clearly do overlap and many writers have argued so but to see the interplay in action, in empirical analysis, is important. Anybody with an interest in these theories, in their overlap and/or their application could not help but be impressed. Furthermore, from my own point of view these writers do, collectively, provide an extremely strong and persuasive basis for social science. The link between theory and data is not always exploited to its full potential, however. Each is used to explicate or illustrate the other but the fit between the two is often presumed more than argued for. And the same might be said of a number of the interpretations of aspects of working class life offered. Charlesworth offers his own interpretations without considering alternatives or addressing doubts that some readers may have. When discussing the friendly use of pejorative terms of address (e.g. ‘alright you old bastard?’), for example, he offers a very class-based interpretation; but this assumes that only working class people use pejorative terms in this way, which is not true in my experience. Admittedly this type of address is not common in the academic world (which Charlesworth sometimes takes as a point of comparison) but academics are quite a peculiar lot, particularly in terms of language, and are by no means representative of all that is not working class. I do not mean to deny here that Charlesworth often seems to hit the nail on the head but even when he does he tends not to consider alternatives. Furthermore, as my comment on academics suggests, it can be difficult to make class interpretations stick in the absence of a systematic comparative framework (and sampling strategy), which allows us to see which dispositions belong exclusively to what groups or, indeed, what fractions of groups.
What are the implications of the study for epidemiology and health more generally? Clearly the book is not about health, nor does it make any claim to be. Consequently, references to health are few and far between. They are there, however. At more than one point Charlesworth notes the prominence and visibility of ill health, mental and physical, amongst his community. He interprets this as consequences of anomie, alienation, and the collapse of community. This theme is developed in two ways. Firstly, he implies that visible indications of illness are signs that communicate a general sense of depression. Like crime or aggression, the presence of ‘illness’ on the streets has an impact upon the sense of well-being of all. Furthermore, it is one amongst a number of signs that mark out an area as working class. We know that we are in a working class area because of the visibility of illness on the bodies of its inhabitants. Secondly, he argues that much of the illness is a response by the ‘phenomenal body’ (that is, the body qua site of subjective experience and purposive action) to its social situation. Neither of these ideas is developed at any length, and neither is new. However, the fact that Charlesworth coherently draws together both sociological and existentialist ideas, in his version, and brings to this a ‘thick description’ of working class life, does provide a refreshing, informed, and persuasive framework for thinking again about these issues. One will not find ‘answers’ to epidemiological questions here, nor claims to provide such answers, but one will find resources (empirical and theoretical), interesting lines of inquiry and perhaps even new ways of framing the questions.
My overall view of the book was mixed. What Charlesworth is doing is vital. He is making a stance on very important issues. And to my mind he is drawing together some of the most persuasive theoretical and philosophical frameworks in the sociological repertoire to carry his project through to execution. For all of these reasons the book is both important and impressive. And yet I was not wholly convinced. Charlesworth may be right on many points but sociology requires of us not only that we are right but that we argue the case for this against all possible or probable lines of objection; that we challenge our own assumptions and ‘think against ourselves’ (to borrow Sartre’s phrase). In the final instance this is what is missing in The Phenomenology of Working Class Experience.
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