It’s my day off and I’ve been reading the book pictured below. Distinction, by Pierre Bourdieu.
Why am I reading a sociology text on a day like today?
Well for a start it’s raining, and that means the plan to tidy the garden is on hold, and as I’ve long since left puberty the availability of spots to squeeze is somewhat reduced, so in the absence of other distractor habits I’m browsing a book that’s sitting on my desk glowing like an overly attended pimple.
The book is about culture, and the difference that having availability to (and experience of) non-financial social assets make to (a person’s ability to determine) what is considered tasteful or acceptable in society, and how this is a distinctive separator between social classes. How those ‘with’ are able to determine and define cultural standards and acceptance while those ‘without’ have to define themselves from the perspective of the dominant social aesthetic.
I am not a sociologist. This is my thumbnail sketch interpretation which is obviously, given my lack of educational asset in that area, not the last word on the subject, or the most definitive or accurate review (as I won’t pretend I’m going to read the entire book it can’t be), and it almost certainly isn’t the perspective of someone further up the hierarchy of knowledge in this field. That’s my mealy mouthed and evasive description to allay fears arising from lack of confidence in the topic.
The subject appears particularly pertinent after yesterday reading a Guardian article which reminded me of the background to the Park Hill rendering in neon of the “I love you will u marry me” graffiti. And I now feel ranty, in a first draft kind of way.
That this simple graffiti phrase became symbolic of the regeneration of the flats, with the hope that it implied, is ironic given the backstory. With some hindsight (and a long-present feeling of discomfort about it) the creation of the meme includes an unspoken and patronising nod to the idea that those who lived here before the regeneration could have such inadvertently uplifting thoughts. That those worthy, but culturally illiterate residents, could have such lofty and romantic ideals, based on something more abstract than their physical height above the ground, is laughable it seems to suggest. This makes me somewhat angry - and yes, this sounds like I have set up a straw-man, it won't be there in the soon-to-be non-existent second draft.
The existence of the people who lived here is rarely heard or seen first-hand except through the transformative lens of the tourist, where it is always filtered, never made visible. And when the voice of one person is heard via the medium of the spray-can it is translated, appropriated into cultural capital for those with the social assets to interpret it. This change added cultural credibility allowing it to be monetised, while the original creation had no intrinsic value other than the public declaration from one person to another.
The originator of the graffiti has been ignored by the property developers - locating the writer was always likely to undermine their creation and they never tried. Once the writer was found the developers unsurprisingly showed little interest. His efforts, for all their benefit to the developers, received not so much as a bottle of branded beer or a t-shirt with his words on.
The words had no intrinsic value before they were highlighted in neon, and through lack of recognition by the developers the originator of the words has by extension been revealed to also be seen as valueless.
The developers believe that they are the ones who create value, it is part of their ethos of regenerating empty buildings for "post punk kids looking for cool spaces to live in", being from the dominant class they are therefore positioned to be the arbiters of taste and essentially in this case they are right. Although generally the aristocracy of culture doesn’t always show itself to be so shallow.
It has now stopped raining, I am going outside to take out my ranting on the slugs.
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