In this valuable study, drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Derek Wynne looks at how the middle class constructs and defends its social identity. Through the study of residents living on a fashionable, recently constructed housing estate, "The Heath", which contains its own private leisure and sports facilities, he considers the extent to which social identity within the new middle class can be considered to relate more to experience associated with leisure and cultural consumption than to experiences related to productive activity. Working from a theory that the traditional middle class has fragmented along social and recreational lines, Wynn finds evidence suggesting these people regard themselve less as workers who occasionally relax, than as highly-specialized "leisurers" who, though necessity or avocation, work.