Q: What shapes the conditions in which we live? A: Capitalism

Q: What type of capitalism do we inhabit? A: It depends on history and the geopolitical landscape.

Q: How does capitalism shape the way we live? A: By organising the economy in a particular way that benefits some people and limits others. This organisation creates structures – hardened forms of inequality e.g. the labour market has specific divisions and hierarchy. The structure and organisation is designed in the interests of accumulation. Capitalism also establishes supportive institutions that legitimate those structures

Q: How do we know how this works? A: By examining inequalities across different sites

These are the basic questions that shape my analysis of anything: what shapes all our lives in the interests of some and not others. Hence, I’ve studied the economic basis of social relationships e.g. how property (buildings/architecture in a specific area) plus consumption (e.g. bars and clubs) enables and incites certain social groups and behaviours, but also puts limits on others (e.g. policing, violence, culture). These structures evolve, for instance capitalism is changing shape at the moment, moving from industrialisation to financialisation, and people can influence the form these structures take, sometimes. But i always want to know what makes different lives possible – what are the conditions of possibility. All my research at some point has a political economic analysis of the conditions which effect how we can and cannot live, the social relationships we inhabit.

Beverley Skeggs, 2024