Rose Butler & Eve Vincent – Love Across Class

LAUNCHED BY ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR ZORA SIMIC

Explore how people from different class backgrounds meet, live with and love one another.

What does it mean to partner across class difference? This lucid and original book is the first to explore cross-class relationships in contemporary Australia, a society long-invested in the myth of egalitarianism. Drawing on in-depth interviews with people from a range of class and cultural backgrounds, Love Across Class brings to life the role of class in shaping people’s childhoods, as well as the adult lives couples have built together. These stories move between the mundane, the profound and the taboo, as interviewees reckon openly with the pain, pleasure, humour and contradiction that comes with forming a close relationship across class. From escaping one’s class background and confronting class dissimilarity, to managing money and negotiating holidays, this book offers rich accounts of personal worlds shared across class as they are lived.

Yet not only do those interviewed reflect on the classed dynamics and tensions present in their relationships and family life, they also strive to grasp the concept of class itself. Conversations about class at home ultimately led to scrutiny of other areas of society deeply implicated in class experience in Australia. Education, work, migration and assets are all examined here amid the backdrop of growing inequality. For many, forming a relationship across class brought these stark realities to the fore. This engaging book will stimulate readers to think about class in intimate, emotional and society-wide terms.