Class

The politics of gender and feminist research have outlined the deprivations and unequal entitlements in the lives of women. This frame has also produced the view that understanding women's lives is incomplete without looking at their everyday locations within families that must include relations with men. This research has tried to bring into focus the way that men's support can be outlined and reflected upon in the context of gender equality and domestic democracy. Supportive practices are more than an `alternative' frame within which to place men. They enable us to hear an aspect of men's lives and expressions of their subjective positions in ways that have not so far been addressed.

Pierre Bourdieu's absence will be felt in the sociology of the future and especially in the sociology of education, a discipline that he sought to establish at the centre of mainstream sociology. He repeatedly drew attention to the fact that without an adequate understanding of the processes within educational practice that shape habitus and perpetuate symbolic violence under an appearance of neutrality, we cannot fully establish a sociology of power that focuses on the dynamic of class relations.