Gray, Jane and O'Carroll, Aileen (2012) Education and class formation in 20th century Ireland: a retrospective qualitative longitudinal analysis. Sociology, 46 (4). pp. 696-711. ISSN 0038-0385

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Abstract

The article presents a retrospective qualitative longitudinal analysis of experiences of education and class amongst three cohorts of Irish people who started out in difficult financial circumstances. It shows how the intersection of education and class-formation in modern Ireland was 'realized' in different historical periods during the twentieth century. Some groups accumulated economic and cultural resources allowing them to convert education to upward social mobility during key periods, whereas others were 'shut out' from the project of the state. We argue that the concept of 'experience', understood as the realization of historically situated macro-sociological processes, provides a useful way of linking agency to structural change, bringing the strengths of macro-sociological quantitative analysis together with those of micro-sociological qualitative analysis within a longer temporal frame.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	The final, definitive version of this paper has been published in Sociology, Vol 46/Issue 4, 2012 by SAGE Publications Ltd, All rights reserved. © [The Author(s)] doi:10.1177/0038038511428750
Keywords:	Class-Formation; Education; Qualitative Longitudinal Methods; Life Histories; Ireland; 20th Century;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Sociology
Item ID:	4415
Depositing User:	Jane Gray
Date Deposited:	10 Jul 2013 13:45
Journal or Publication Title:	Sociology
Publisher:	SAGE
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	http://online.sagepub.com
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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