Beverley Skeggs

Published in 1997, "Formations of Class and Gender" is an influential ethnographic study of working-class women enrolled in care courses in northwestern England. Skeggs explores how these women understand and experience social class, often distancing themselves from the stigmatized label of being "working class." The book highlights how the women struggle to attain respectability within a system that devalues them.

Skeggs has made massive contributions to the sociology of social class, gender, and the concept of "value." She argues that the middle class establishes its own identity by projecting lack of value onto the working class. Her research explains how respectability becomes a crucial, contested currency for marginalized women.

In her later research, Skeggs analyzed reality television to understand how it produces and reinforces class judgments. She co-authored work showing how reality TV turns the working-class body into a spectacle for middle-class entertainment and moral policing. This connects her earlier theories of value and respectability to modern media consumption.

Beverley Skeggs had a prominent academic career in the UK, teaching at prestigious institutions including Lancaster University, Goldsmiths, and the University of Manchester. She also served as the Director of the Atlantic Fellows programme for Social and Economic Equity at the London School of Economics (LSE). She is recognized internationally as a leading feminist social theorist.