Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Whiteness and Class in Education

  • Book
  • © 2007

Overview

Authors:
  1. John Preston

    1. University of East London, United Kingdom

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

  • The first collected book which uses critical whiteness studies to examine education outside of the United States
  • Uses a range of empirical techniques to interrogate whiteness within education in a number of settings (eg it moves beyond schooling)
  • For those interested in ‘race’ issues in education, the book explores a new paradigm though which racism can be explored and confronted

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this book

Log in via an institution
eBook USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

Licence this eBook for your library

Institutional subscriptions

Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages I-X
    Download chapter PDF

  2. From Troubling Whiteness to Treason to Whiteness

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1
      Download chapter PDF

    2. From Troubling Whiteness to Treason to Whiteness

      • John Preston
      Pages 1-31

  3. White Identities, Practices and Privileges in Education

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 33-33
      Download chapter PDF

    2. How the White Working Class Became ‘Chav’

      • John Preston
      Pages 35-57

    3. Class and Race Strategies in Adult Education

      • John Preston
      Pages 59-79

    4. Smells Like White Spirit

      • John Preston
      Pages 81-103

  4. Policy, Pedagogy and ‘White Supremacy’ in Education

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 105-105
      Download chapter PDF

    2. Take the Skinheads Bowling

      • John Preston
      Pages 107-140

    3. Homeland Insecurity

      • John Preston
      Pages 141-165

    4. Towards a ‘Trash Crit’

      • John Preston
      Pages 167-187

    5. Concluding Remarks

      • John Preston
      Pages 189-198

  5. Back Matter

    Pages 199-214
    Download chapter PDF
Back to top

Keywords

About this book

Like many of my friends I didn’t really realise that I was working class until I went to university. Suddenly, what I thought as normal became subtly and not so subtly differentiated as I came into close contact with the middle classes. I had not known a time, though, when I hadn’t been white, but I didn’t really realise that I was white until I read David Roediger’s (1991) book ‘The Wages of Whiteness’. Through reading this work and others on the topic of whiteness the sense of my own whiteness became palpable to me. Namely, that what I naively thought to be a timeless property of my skin was a social construction that had acquired so much symbolic weight over time that it had become seemingly real: a racial formation and project. This was with consequences, in that a good part of my actual and psychological labour market and other employment benefits were not part of a meritocratic system, but due to the oppression of people of colour. This might be part of a system that I at the time associated only with the far-right, a system of white supremacy. Fundamentally, my skin was property and the gains that I had made through it were at the expense of others. I was a ‘so called white’ (Ignatiev and Garvey, 1996) who everyday made a political decision to not commit ‘treason’ to whiteness.

Reviews

From the reviews: “Preston is a serious academic. The book … is ambitious in scope (including new empirical data as well as wide ranging reviews of the contemporary theoretical literature) and written with a clear voice that does not flinch from critiquing some of the key figures in the field. … In the field of race and class inequities in UK education, this is one of the most important books of the decade. It deserves a wide readership … .” (David Gillborn, Studies in the Education of Adults, Vol. 41 (2), 2009)

Authors and Affiliations

  • University of East London, United Kingdom

    John Preston

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Whiteness and Class in Education

  • Authors: John Preston

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6108-0

  • Publisher: Springer Dordrecht

  • eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, Education (R0)

  • Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4020-6107-3Published: 16 July 2007

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-90-481-2307-0Published: 19 March 2009

  • eBook ISBN: 978-1-4020-6108-0Published: 08 August 2007

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: X, 214

  • Topics: Sociology of Education, Higher Education

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Back to top

Search

Navigation