Re-classifying consumer research

We cannot fully understand, comment on, or change our consumer culture without recognising class, but in this provocation piece, we want to question if it is possible for business schools (and marketing departments in particular) – embedded as they are in middle-class outlooks and logics – to research, theorise, and teach class-based consumption without distortions that perpetuate class differences. We start with a short recall on why class matters. We then consider what it means to research class and why business schools may be doing it wrong. Then, highlighting the obstacles that working-class experiences, identities, and voices face when they stray into the archetypal B-School, we close with a call to reclassify the business school.