Class, affect, margins

Abstract

While academic attention to class has fluctuated in tandem with wider social struggles, it invariably returns from relative quiet periods with a renewed vigour, reasserting its usefulness in understanding and connecting unequal social transformations. Contributions here look to extend class analysis toward the affective and emotional dynamics of social life in a period of social polarisation and fragmented class politics. In this introduction we advocate for a renewed critical discussion on class trajectories and transformations across social sciences, everyday life and political economic agendas. We are prompted here by the contributions to the collection, which inspire a (re-)exploration of the interrelations between fields of action in their approaches to class. The discussion is structured around three processes central to contemporary class relations: reconfigurations of class(es); the (de-)homogenisation of meanings and feelings of class; and the reconstitution and historicisation of margins and inequality.