Together with a team of sociologists and anthropologists at different UK Universities, we have been examining how intensifying inequality in the UK plays out at a local level in order to bring out the varied ways that social polarisation takes place ‘on the ground’. Bringing an ethnographic analysis buttressed by quantitative framing to the study of economic, spatial and relational polarisation across four towns in Oxford, we distinguish differing dynamics of ‘elite-based polarisation’ and ‘poverty based’ polarisation. We argue in the research that the weakness of intermediary institutions, including but not limited to a ‘missing middle’ and capable of bridging gaps between various social groups, provides a major insight into both the obstacles to, and potential solutions, for re-politicising inequality. This project was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Institute of Global Affairs Research and Impact Seed Fund at the LSE (co-PIs Mike Savage and David Soskice, LSE). Our flagship publication includes this article which won the 2022 Innovation/Excellence Paper Award by the British Sociological Association.

This collaborative study has explored how, under conditions of continuing economic crisis, assumptions about the nature of society are being reshaped: particularly in respect of who receives assistance and who funds and arranges it. Where the 'usual' targets of welfare and benefits were the poor or destitute, they now include those who work but cannot make ends meet, and who experience increasing numbers of complex problems for which they need advice. And where the 'usual' provider of such things, at least in the post-war years, has been the state, this is increasingly not the case. As the economic crisis proceeds apace and the state's role is being whittled down, access to the counsel of experts is nonetheless increasingly essential. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in the UK, Spain, Germany and Italy, we have investigated the novel arrangements and their unintended consequences that are emerging in the wake of austerity politics. The project was funded by a grant from the ESRC (PI Deborah James, LSE) and our main publication includes this special issue.

The Covid-19 pandemic has impacted everyone in the UK, regardless of race, class, gender or region. However, this impact has been and will be more severe for some communities than others. Those who are losing out from the covid-19 pandemic in terms of health, mortality and economic losses, are both communities who have historically experienced poverty, inequality of opportunity and discrimination over the past decades of austerity policy in the UK; and communities facing new challenges and insecurities. However, they are also communities who have come together to support each other in new and improvised ways as a result of the crisis. We see this as a moment of great rupture for our society, and believe that this rupture can present opportunities to overcome social and economic divides as we are led out of crisis. As a team of anthropologists based at, or with affiliations to, the LSE, we have been doing research on how communities who are disadvantaged by the covid-19 pandemic understand the ways they are responding to the crisis, and to support them on the path to recovery. Our reports are available here and our publications have included a commentary piece in the British Medical Journal .