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At a time when the public sector and state education (in the United Kingdom) is under threat from the encroaching marketisation policy and private finance initiatives, our research reveals white middle-class parents who in spite of having the financial opportunity to turn their backs on the state system are choosing to assert their commitment to the urban state-run comprehensive school. Our analysis examines the processes of "thinking and acting otherwise", and demonstrates the nature of the commitment the parents make to the local comprehensive school. However, it also shows the parents' perceptions of the risk involved and their anxieties that these give rise to. The middle-class parents are thus caught in a web of moral ambiguity, dilemmas and ambivalence, trying to perform "the good/ethical self" while ensuring the "best" for their children. (Contains 2 notes.)

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.2008.00786.x Byline: Diane Reay (1), Gill Crozier (1), David James (1), Sumi Hollingworth (1), Katya Williams (1), Fiona Jamieson (1), Phoebe Beedell (1) Abstract: Abstract Recent research on social class and whiteness points to disquieting and exclusive aspects of white middle class identities. This paper focuses on whether 'alternative' middle class identities might work against, and disrupt, normative views of what it means to be 'middle class' at the beginning of the 21.sup.st Century. Drawing on data from those middle classes who choose to send their children to urban comprehensives, we examine processes of 'thinking and acting otherwise' in order to uncover some of the commitments and investments that might make for a renewed and reinvigorated democratic citizenry. The difficulties of turning these commitments and investments into more equitable ways of interacting with class and ethnic others which emerge as real challenges for this left leaning, pro-welfare segment of the middle classes. Within a contemporary era of neo-liberalism that valorises competition, individualism and the market even these white middle classes who express a strong commitment to community and social mixing struggle to convert inclinations into actions. Author Affiliation: (1)University of Cambridge Article History: Received 10 August 2007Finally accepted 29 January 2008

0Using detailed extracts from two life histories, this article examines the nature of the personal identifications that often underpin the commitment of welfare workers to their jobs. We explore the paradox that it is those identifications such as class and gender, mediated through individual biography, that fix the 'self as object' and that also provide us with the resources for self-transformation. In this respect, the article not only throws light upon the psychical and emotional roots of commitment to the other, but also upon some of the impasses 'identity theory' currently finds itself in.