Folk Devils and the Hipster Figure: On Classification Struggles, Social Types and Figures in Moral Panic Research

Abstract

This chapter draws on a case study of contested societal reactions to the middle-class hipster figure and gentrification in contemporary London. The analysis shows how public reactions involve forms of class politics and classificatory struggles over the moral meaning gentrification processes and the role of the hipster figure in the latter. Through this, the chapter discusses how the folk devil can be conceptualized as a social type by drawing on Bourdieu’s research on classification.