Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class

Jones, Owen

ISBN 10: 184467696X / ISBN 13: 9781844676965

Published by Verso, 2011

About this Item

Seller Inventory # U9781844676965

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class
• Publisher: Verso
• Publication Date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 184467696X
• ISBN 13: 9781844676965
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1755162812.
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: 47168873
• Signed: 8/14/2025 9:13:32 AM
• Seller catalogs:
  • 2
  • U
  • 9781844676965

About this title

Synopsis

In modern Britain, the working class has become an object of fear and ridicule. From Little Britain’s Vicky Pollard to the demonization of Jade Goody, media and politicians alike dismiss as feckless, criminalized and ignorant a vast, underprivileged swathe of society whose members have become stereotyped by one, hate-filled word: chavs.

In this groundbreaking investigation, Owen Jones explores how the working class has gone from “salt of the earth” to “scum of the earth.” Exposing the ignorance and prejudice at the heart of the chav caricature, one based on the media’s inexhaustible obsession with an indigent white underclass, he portrays a far more complex reality. Moving through Westminster’s lobbies and working-class communities from Dagenham to Dewsbury Moor, Jones reveals the increasing poverty and desperation of communities made precarious by wrenching social and industrial change, and all but abandoned by the aspirational, society-fragmenting policies of Thatcherism and New Labour. The chav stereotype, he argues, is used by governments as a convenient figleaf to avoid genuine engagement with social and economic problems, and to justify widening inequality.

Based on a wealth of original research, and wide-ranging interviews with media figures, political opinion-formers and workers, Chavs is a damning indictment of the media and political establishment, and an illuminating, disturbing portrait of inequality and class hatred in modern Britain.

About the Author

Owen Jones is a writer, commentator and activist. He writes frequently for the Guardian, Independent and New Statesman, and has worked in Parliament as a trade union lobbyist and parliamentary researcher, helping Labour plan backbench rebellions on issues ranging from civil liberties to workers’ rights. He lives in London.