[Mon 12th Sep 2011] Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class, with Owen Jones (London, WC1B 3QE)
- Thread starter dynamicbaddog
- Start date
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Yes.
dynamicbaddog
run for your life
I've been to the talks and discussions as well, so I already know what the book is all about.
The most important thing about this book is the attention it's recieved, I think it's a very postive thing that class is being discussed in the mainstream media again - thanks to this book.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
So you know enough to call me a liar due to your meetings? OK, you were wrong, now what?
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
She's mentioned as knowing what class really means, over and over. Like what i said.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Because that's who he hangs about with. The whole book is rancid with this stuff
dynamicbaddog
run for your life
I wasn't wrong. You may have read the book, but you have obviously haven't comprehended what you have read.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Obviously. Give me some pointers then. Tell me where i'm wrong. I've argued that he uses Boris Johnson's sister as a guide to how modern class works. He explicitly says this himself - repeatdly. Page 170 for example. The start of a very important theme establishing chapter for the book:
he then goes on at great length to establish how this 'rigged society' works.
If you're going to defend a book then don't accuse others of not having read it. Especially not if you haven't. Because you might end up looking tad daft. I'd advise you not to say that they've not understood it either. Same reason. Unless you've got some killer argument coming up.
dynamicbaddog
run for your life
no he does'nt. Yes, he interviews her but I don't see how you could say he's using her opinons as a guide for the whole book. I suggest that if he is ever doing a meeting in your area that you go along and put this to him directly.
Anyway the point is that this book has helped put the whole issue of class back in the mainstream media and by doing so had made an important contribution to the class struggle.(I've finished the book now btw, I read it alongside Rob Sewell's In The Cause of Labour - another very important work)
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Yes he does. He explicitly says so and uses the quote above (one of many) to establish how it works. How pig headed do you have to be to say that author is wrong and also that he didn't ague what he did? Is he another one whose not read the book? I suppose admonishing people for not reading a book when you haven't read it yourself is a good start point for that sort of stuff.
*Give us back our shit jobs maggie*
*Give us back our shit jobs maggie*
dynamicbaddog
run for your life
Joe Reilly
Well-Known Member
Dosen't say an awful lot for his research that it seemed beyond him to find the IWCA in Blackbird Leys in his time there. But then again with Bojo's sister as a favoured consulant why bother? Far better the faded aristocracy opine on the condition of the working class, thus avoiding the tiresome chore of sitting down with elected representatives from same. All the same does it not seem more than a little perverse that not even his curiousity got the better of him?
love detective
there's no love too small
Especially when Oxford & London are the two main places he's lived for the last 8 years or so - he wouldn't have had to go out of his way much to do so
When we asked him about it he simply claims he 'ran out of time' - which says plenty
Then, post-publication, when given an opportunity of being put in touch with someone from Oxford (for a chat) he fell completely silent and we haven't heard from him since
Also quite telling that when prodded on a couple of general points in emails, and despite his ongoing claim that the purpose of his book is to 'stimulate debate', he failed to even respond to them
When we asked him about it he simply claims he 'ran out of time' - which says plenty
Then, post-publication, when given an opportunity of being put in touch with someone from Oxford (for a chat) he fell completely silent and we haven't heard from him since
Also quite telling that when prodded on a couple of general points in emails, and despite his ongoing claim that the purpose of his book is to 'stimulate debate', he failed to even respond to them
dynamicbaddog
run for your life
don't see why Owen has to answer to the IWCA to be honest. The book was written to reach a far wider audience than the usual suspects of the ultra left.
past caring
The Cathars were right
No-one's asking him to "answer" to anybody you plum, just pointing out that his sort, as ever, prefer to deal with the working class as object of history, not subject. And as for this wider audience - you imagine you're going to reach that coat-trailing for him on here? 
Fedayn
Well-Known Member
No offence but the notion of Rob Sewell and 'very important read' in the same sentence makes me chuckle. I do hope it's better than his book on the 1918 German Revolution. I'd have thought a book more up his 'street' would have been 'Tube Stations which have waiting rooms for to grab womens arses in'.
love detective
there's no love too small
As has been said, no one's expecting him to answer to anyone (probably the only time he's been expected to answer to someone was when he was working for the labour party when they were in power - a job he went straight into after doing a degree and then a MA at Oxford University - working for labour while in opposition clearly didn't appeal - he's doing a PHD now I believe)
what's being said is:-
a) it's odd that as part of his research for this book he didn't bother to get in touch with a group literally just down the road from him who had long ago articulated some of the things he was trying to, who have had direct relevant experience of organising in the working class communities that he is so concerned about and who at various times have actually been able to get class issues raised & discussed in the mainstream media - something that his book is supposed to be about (i.e. the treatment of the class issues and the working class in the media)
b) it's odd that despite him constantly parroting the line about the purpose of his book being to stimulate debate about class, when we actually attempted to do this with him he went silent
I also noticed the other day he was musing about the pros & cons of picking 'class' as a topic for 'his first book' - which comes across as someone who wants to be an author/media darling and has used the topic of class as a means of getting there - his writings about class and the working class seem to me to be the means to something else, rather than an end in itself
Mr.Bishie
pickled egg
Oh do fuck off.
dynamicbaddog
run for your life
good point
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
But seeing how he will engage on twitter and other social networking with every fucker else ( including son of the assistant to on of the local MPs in Stockport) it makes you wonder why he doesn't respond to the IWCA.
And whilst you are wrong in considering the IWCA to be ultra left you are right about his wider audience . he can speak at Marxism , he can speak at the AWL seminar but actually he will be defending Labour as his choice in 'realistically' advancing the cause of the working class.
In fact in his own words:
http://owenjones.org/2011/03/02/why-labour-is-the-lefts-only-hope/
past caring
The Cathars were right
It's a shit point.
dynamicbaddog
run for your life
that's an excellent article. One of the best he's written
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
sorry - was this an ma at oxford or an oxford ma? an oxford ma is (or at least was until very recently) available for any oxford graduate waiting a year and paying something like £14. as opposed to an ma from anywhere else (except for cambridge, where again at least until recently the same thing applied).
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
clearly sets out a bench mark for improvement then
Paulie Tandoori
shut it you egg!
i'd like to fucking demonize you for 5 minutes
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