The troubling concept of class: reflecting on our ‘failure’ to encourage sociology students to re-cognise their classed locations using autobiographical methods

Abstract This paper provides a narrative of the four authors’ commitment to auto/biographical methods as teachers and researchers in ‘new’ universities. As they went about their work, they observed that, whereas students engage with the gendered, sexualised and racialised processes when negotiating their identities, they are reluctant or unable to conceptualise ‘class-ifying’ processes as key determinants of their life chances. This general inability puzzled the authors, given the students’ predominantly working-class backgrounds. Through application of their own stories, the authors explore the sociological significance of this pedagogical ‘failure’ to account for the troubling concept of class not only in the classroom but also in contemporary society.