First published in 1982, Class, Culture and Community (now with a new preface by the author) is a biographical study of class, culture, and community in a mining village based on the life of one man, a Northumberland pitman and the author’s grandfather. It traces some of the principal social changes in British society in the twentieth century and raises issues which are central to an understanding of the sociology of modern Britain.
The mining village, Throckley, in which James Brown lived, was part of the Northumberland coalfield. The author describes it as a ‘constructed community’, with two historical impulses giving shape to its principal institutions—the capitalist drive for profit from pits, and the efforts of organized labour for a better standard of life. He shows how the Throckley coal company built up a village, but shows that so, too, did the Throckley miners themselves; the class relationships of the village are discussed in these terms.
The life story at the heart of the book illustrates how processes of the social construction of community arise from the compelling activities of everyday life and how from these, in their turn, arise the institutions of organized labour itself. Culture and community are discussed as questions of identity, social recognition, and shared understanding. None of these is static: their changing meanings through war and industrial struggle are described here in the life of a single man and his family.
By:
Bill Williamson (Durham University UK)
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 234mm,
Width: 156mm,
Weight: 660g
ISBN: 9781041004387
ISBN 10: 1041004389
Series: Routledge Revivals
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 02 June 2025
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Introduction 1. Heddon-on-the-Wall and fragments of a childhood 2. School and into the pit 3. Images of youth 4. Throckley 5. Pit work 6. Time off 7. Domestic work 8. Family life: the early years 9. The First World War 10. The General Strike and the miners’ lock-out, 1926 11. The depression years and retirement, 1926–36 12. Retirement, war and ripe old age 13. Conclusion
Bill Williamson is a Sociologist and Emeritus Professor of Continuing Education at Durham University, UK.
Reviews for Class, Culture and Community: A Biographical Study of Social Change in Mining
Review of the first publication: ‘It is not only its political relevance that makes Williamson's book interesting. It is also the methodological and theoretical orientation which unites sociology and history through biography and links them with modem social and cultural theory.’ — Nicolas Demertzis, Acta Sociologica, Vol. 28, No. 2
