Equality and Diversity: Using PCS Analysis

Neil Thompson is a highly respected and internationally renowned author. His work on equality and diversity has been the mainstay of course curricula at many universities. At the heart of his theoretical approach is PCS analysis. In this course he explains what PCS analysis is and shows how it can be used to make sense of the complexities involved. As such, it is an essential foundation for promoting equality and diversity.

The course is critical of approaches to equality and diversity that focus mainly or exclusively on the individual or personal level and have little or nothing to say about the wider context. The case is made for looking more holistically at situations involving discrimination by recognizing that much depends on the wider cultural level which is characterized by stereotypes, discriminatory assumptions and forms of language that stand in the way of genuine equality.

In turn, the cultural level needs to be understood as being shaped by wider structural factors – class, race/ethnicity and gender – and the ways in which these ‘social divisions’ reinforce and are reinforced by the common assumptions at the cultural level.

PCS analysis provides a helpful framework for understanding how these three different levels – personal, cultural and structural interact and contribute to discrimination and oppression.