Lars Meier - Working Class Experiences of Social Inequalities in (Post-) Industrial Landscapes: Feelings of Class

Based on qualitative research among industrial workers in a region that has undergone deindustrialisation and transformation to a service-based economy, this book examines the loss of status among former manual labourers. Focus lies on their emotional experiences, nostalgic memories, hauntings from the past and attachments to their former places of work, to transformed neighbourhoods, as well as to public space. Against this background the book explores the continued importance of class as workers attempt to manage the declining recognition of their skills and a loss of power in an established-outsider figuration. A study of the transformation of everyday life and social positions wrought by changes in the social structure, in urban landscapes and in the structures of feeling, this examination of the dynamic of social identity will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology and geography with interests in post-industrial societies, social inequality, class and social identity.

Lars Meier is Professor for Sociology and Social Inequality at the Institute for Sociology, Goethe-Universitt Frankfurt, Germany.

This series welcomes books which contribute to a sociological understanding of the city. The following list of possible topics is illustrative, not exhaustive.

Brands and the City
Entanglements and Implications for Urban Life
Sonia Bookman

Transport, Transgression and Politics in African Cities
The Rhythm of Chaos
Edited by Daniel E. Agbiboa

Contentious Politics and the Welfare State
Squatting in Sweden
Dominika V. Polanska

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/sociology/series/ASHSER1347

First published 2021

by Routledge

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2021 Lars Meier

The right of Lars Meier to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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ISBN: 978-1-138-31217-3 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-367-77502-5 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-45840-8 (ebk)

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The location of interviews is important as it constructs the positionality of the participants and produces micro-geographies of spatial relations and meaning (Elwood and Martin 2000: 649). This is true for the interview site the living room or restaurant where the researcher and the interviewees meet. Here social interactions and power relations between both are of relevance for the course of the conversation (Frers and Meier 2021). But the interviewees narration is also affected by the city where the interviews took place (Nuremberg in Franconia).

As products of ongoing practices, cities are always under transformation, which can be seen at different levels, such as in social structures, local economies and politics, architecture and materiality, cultural products, social encounters and social identities. The citys history is still of relevance in the structures of Nuremberg and can be seen in its architecture, for example, in streets that follow ancient routes through the city, in old premises or transformed buildings that refer to former structures. Nurembergs past is also of relevance in todays narratives and memories of the interviewees. This is reflected in a specific dialect (formed as a mixture of the dialects of settlers from the Upper Palatinate and those from Franconia) and also by the contextualisations of individuals or family histories within the history of the city. With its long history of industry, Nuremberg has attained a specific imprint that is as a local structure of feeling (Williams 1977) relevant for interviewees today. The structure of feeling approach (see Chapter 1) connects contemporary structures and practices in Nuremberg with residual and emergent structures. Consequently, it provides a perspective on the past as being relevant for today. To understand the narratives of workers and their experiences of social inequality, as examined in this book, the history and transformations of Nuremberg, where the interviews took place, must be explained.

The functions of this chapter are twofold. First, it presents the methods used in fieldwork and especially in taking biographic interviews in the local context of Nuremberg. Second, the chapter provides the history of the local context. This is relevant for understanding todays structure of feeling and for understanding the context in which the workers coping strategies in terms of changes in their social positions are interpreted in later chapters.