Getting By ─ Estates, Class and Culture in Austerity Britain

The poor in the UK have been increasingly stigmatised over the last 30 years, and the cultural and symbolic aspects of being working class today are as significant to inequality as the economic circumstances which produce it. Meanwhile, many of the communities in which the poor live have become the subject of great public concern and media scorn.

This unique book uses the past history of a typical neighbourhood as one of the threads connecting past and present working class lives. St Ann’s Estate in Nottingham is notorious as the place where the city’s gangs, guns, drugs, and single mothers reside and is known as the place where the feckless, the unemployed and those who are unwilling or unable to make something of their lives end up as long-term residents.

Lisa McKenzie, a resident of St Ann’s for more than 20 years and now an academic and activist, uses her ?insider’ status to offer a rare insight into life on St Ann’s by using the stories of those who live there. Gaining access to those who are often wary of outsiders, she provides local and personal understanding to offer an important account of the complexities of living in poor neighbourhoods in contemporary Britain.

Lisa Mckenzie is a research fellow in the Department of Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science.