Class and identity processes : restructuring in the (former) coalmining communities of the South Wales valleys

Abstract

This thesis investigates how the social organisation of the populations of the South Wales Valleys has transformed by restructuring processes at the end of the twentieth century. In doing so it engages with issues which have long concerned sociologists, examining the complex relationship between structure, culture and agency. In particular it looks at how group loyalties have been disrupted by the demise of coalmining and the heterogenisation of the Valleys' labour markets, how spatial attachments have been affected by a growing awareness of a broader range of spaces affect life experiences, and how under broader transformations, self-understandings have become more complex. This is investigated through fieldwork conducted in three distinct 'waves' in the western anthracite district of the South Wales Valleys and consisting of fifty semi-structured interviews and a focus group with seventy individuals, distinguished by their processing a former or current coalmining household identity. The project draws upon a theoretical framework which reconfigures class processes in order to understand how individuals' responses to restructuring are related to their positioning in relation to a series of unequally distributed 'resources'.

The work of Bourdieu is employed to develop an analytical scheme which recognises that resources are interdependent, cumulative and dynamic, and derivative of a broader range of sources than the labour market. In order to understand how individuals' structural positioning enables them to effect greater or lesser degrees of agentic behaviour, their behaviour is analysed in terms of 'strategic' and 'survivalist' behaviour, respectively consisting of long- and short-term planning. Through a holistic examination of individuals' life experiences, this categorisation enables a complex understanding of the significance of class processes in determining mobility and lifestyle, to be developed, illustrated in the form of a model. It is argued that a series of unequally distributed and inter-related resources fundamentally determine individual behaviour, but these are mediated through a multi-dimensional and dynamic class culture which is specific to individuals' environment. This imbues meaning on their circumstances and facilitates the inherent tensions in their complex attachments to become reconciled and comfortably inhabited.

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