Sunday, October 08, 2006

Common Ground

Wednesdays' Society supplement in The Guardian (I finally reached Wednesday's Guardian in bed this morning, Sunday) had a fantastic piece of writing by anthropologist Gillian Evans about living with a middle-class background on a working-class estate. Although highly educated, and therefore able to earn her way out, she found herself in financial circumstances that made a Bermondsey council estate the only place to live. She stayed 13 years.

In the piece she discusses the key differences between being middle and working class from both her and her neighbour's perceptions. Includes how to learn to communicate, how to keep rules for your children when no other childen have rules and the true value of money. Fascinating.

Click on the title of this piece to read it.

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