Making class and self through televised ethical scenarios

This is a project about how identities based on class (with gender, race and sexuality) are produced by ethical scenarios presented on television. It explores textually mediated subjectivity to show how class is being re-made through the process of ethical choice through telling and display. Both Giddens (1991) and Beck (1992) suggested the demise of class whilst promoting the biographical project of the reflexive self as the way the social is reproduced. Yet theories about this new self identity have remained untested. We propose to track versions of the 'ethical self' in television representations and then explore how these are made by the new cultural intermediaries and the used in everyday life. By tracking a range of different ethical scenarios, from the transformational, to the abject to the reflexive telling of the self, we will examine what resources are required to show that one has ethical value in contemporary society. We aim to show how only some people have access to ways of telling and resolving these ethical dilemmas via the different values attached to ways of displaying subjectivity in the increasing range of hybridised 'reality' television formats. It is these ways of displaying and telling the self that enable class to be known, shown and re-made.