Pride, Paternalism, Prejudice—Images of the Working Class

Ove Skarpenes and Rune Sakslind
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Ove Skarpenes: Department of Sociology and Social Work, University of Agder, 4604 Kristiansand, Norway
Rune Sakslind: Department of Sociology, University of Bergen, 5020 Bergen, Norway

Social Sciences, 2018, vol. 7, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: What has happened with the image of the working class? The hero in the construction of the Nordic Model was the labor movement (and the working class). For a long time, this was the dominant picture of the Norwegian working class. However, the societal trends of the past decades have, in a peculiar way, given the working class a central place in political discussions and in the public sphere, but now, a more ambivalent image emerges. In a somewhat paternalistic way, the worker image in political and academic debates as well as in part of the public sphere is typically that of a person unsuccessful in the educational system. Even a third image is identifiable in the public sphere—a prejudice imagery—in which the class is labelled as unhealthy, abusing the welfare system, culturally unsophisticated, and politically dangerous, moving toward right-wing populism. The ambition of the paper is to present these different images of the working class.

Keywords: Hero; drop-out; images; working class; unhealthy; immigration skepticism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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