Explanations of how identities are constructed are fundamental to contemporary debates in feminism and in cultural and social theory. Formations of Class & Gender demonstrates why class should be featured more prominently in theoretical accounts of gender, identity and power.
Beverley Skeggs identifies the neglect of class, and shows how class and gender must be fused together to produce an accurate representation of power relations in modern society. The book questions how theoretical frameworks are generated for understanding how women live and produce themselves through social and cultural relations. It uses detailed ethnographic research to explain how 'real' women inhabit and occupy the social and cultural positions of class, femininity and sexuality.
As a critical examination of cultural representation - informed by recent feminist theory and the work of Pierre Bourdieu - the book is an articulate demonstration of how to translate theory into practice.

Introduction: Processes, Frameworks and Motivations
Respectable Knowledge: Experience and Interpretation
Historical Legacies: Respectability and Responsibility
Developing and Monitoring a Caring Self
(Dis)Identifications of Class: On Not Being Working Class
Ambivalent Femininities
Becoming Respectably Heterosexual
Refusing Recognition: Feminisms
Conclusions

Beverley Skeggs is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University. She has published The Media; Issues in Sociology; Feminist Cultural Theory; Formations of Class and Gender; Class, Self, Culture Sexuality and the Politics of Violence and Safety (with Les Moran) and Feminism after Bourdieu (with Lisa Adkins), and with Helen Wood, Reacting to Reality TV: Audience, Performance, Value and Reality TV and Class, along with many journal articles on class and culture.  As an ESRC Professorial Fellow she developed a "sociology of values and value'' that included projects on the digital economy and prosperity theology, and whilst Director of the Atlantic Fellows Programme, established the 'Global Economies of Care' theme at the LSE.