Full Description
This is the first interdisciplinary edited collection that examines the manifestation of social inequalities and polarisations in Britain throughout the dual crises of the Brexit vote and the Covid-19 pandemic. The volume demonstrates that Brexit and the pandemic are not self-contained events but rather are major ongoing processes that have impacted all aspects of British social and political life. Drawing on an array of empirical case studies conducted in the wake of the Brexit vote and during pandemic lockdowns, chapters trace how these processes illuminate, consolidate, and amplify existing and entrenched social inequalities and polarisations that shape the fabric of British society, including racial, ethnic, class, migrant, national, and gendered inequalities.
The volume is divided into three parts centred on (a) the nation; (b) the community; and (c) the media. Each section draws on diverse analytical frameworks and methodological approaches from across the social sciences, arts, and humanities to provide empirically grounded critiques of reductive media-led narratives with the goal of accounting for and explaining the reproduction of social inequalities and emergence of polarisations in these Brexit pandemic times. In so doing, the case studies include critical analysis of lockdown novels; the speeches of political elites from across the political spectrum; 'ordinary' people's everyday traditional and social media practices; as well as their opinions based on the findings of large-scale surveys and in-depth place-based ethnographic fieldwork conducted across rural, urban, and suburban areas of England. Each chapter also includes artwork by contemporary artist Helen Snell that complements, develops, and extends the book's core themes and arguments.
This collection will be insightful reading for students and academics across the social sciences, arts, and humanities (especially from the disciplines of sociology, politics, social anthropology, human geography, sociolinguistics, contemporary art, and literature) concerned with questions of social inequality and polarisation.
Chapters 1, 2, 7 and 11 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.
Contents
1. Critically Writing and Sketching Social Inequalities and Polarisation in the Brexit Pandemic Era in Britain Part I - The Nation: Porous and Closed Boundaries 2. "Stay at Home": British Lockdown Novels and the Politics of Home and Homeland in COVID-19 Brexit Britain 3. Us, Them, Other? An Exploration of Boundary Making in Britian and Scotland during Theresa May's First Term in Office 4. "Don't Let 'Em Hear That We're Speaking English": Constructing National and Brexit-related Identities in Oral Interviews 5. Political Identities in Britain During Brexit and Covid: Their Construction and Impact on Preferences and Behaviour Part II - Communities and Workplaces: Racial, Migrant, Class, and Gender Inequalities 6. "I Don't Think They Were Clapping for Me". Home Care Workers During the Covid-19 Pandemic 7. Anti-Immigrant Xenophobia Alongside Non-Elite Cosmopolitanisms in Britain's Most 'Pro-Brexit' Town 8. "Not Men Like Us": Everyday Methodological Whiteness and Respectability in English Sheep Slaughterhouses in the Time of Brexit and Covid-19 9. Racial Nationalisms in Suburban England: Britain's Multiracial Middle-Class in the 21st Century Part III - The Media: On- and Off-line Practices and the Everyday Politics of Polarisation 10. From Brexit to COVID-19: Counter-Politics and Far-Right Politicisation on Social Media 11. Everyday Engagements with the BBC Across Leave and Remain Identities, Drawing on Survey Analysis, Ethnographic Interviews, and Ethnographic Case Studies
