Page 129 - Cultural Change and Ordinary Life

120 Cultural change and ordinary life

seeing the salsa band and watching the 60s’ group. Sometimes, this audience
activity took on other dimensions when I danced (very badly) to the bands.
Sometimes, this involved group activity as when I engaged in organized trad-
itional Scottish country dancing with the folk group at the birthday celebra-
tion. Thus even this simple audience activity involved me in performing
(I danced badly in front of others, with little shame) and audiencing in the
sense that I was an audience for others who were performing in similar ways.
Indeed, a significant part of the pleasure of attending the salsa band was see-
ing the performances of the other dancers, who knew what they were doing to
different levels of skill and poise and whose actions were clearly part of the
communication and display of their skill. Thus the simple audience rapidly
shades into the interaction of diffused audience processes of ordinary life.
During this time I was also a member of the mass audience for television on
many occasions, mainly engaging in this activity with various members of my
family.
Second, there were a number of special occasions here of the type that I
have suggested involve greater degrees of performance and display than would
have been the case even in fairly recent times. Thus, I can go fairly easily (if
I have the money, see later, and if I can overcome my guilt about the planetary
effects of increased air travel) to Helsinki from the north of England for a
weekend. Indeed, at the airport on a Friday there were lots of groups departing
for other cities as part of hen and stag parties, some of then wearing the t-shirts
to display to us as audiences that they were doing this. These activities involve
rituals like drinking bottles of Champagne or quantities of beer first thing in
the morning. Special occasions were being marked with performance, includ-
ing my birthday and that of our local friend, and marked with a range of
performances and audience-like activity.
Third, these activities can be thought of via the different forms of capital:
economic, cultural and social. Thus, I need economic capital to engage in a
number of these activities. Some are more expensive than others, but they all
cost something. This form of capital, like all others, is unevenly distributed and
many people could not afford what I have described. I am privileged. The activi-
ties also involve cultural capital, thus I deployed this around my appreciation
of the music of Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and the contemporary art museum. Finally,
all the activities were social and involved networks of different kinds: family
(immediate and wider), friends (of different types and longevity) and some-
times people whom I had met for the first time. In different ways, the activities
reinforced existing or offered the potential to develop new social ties and
networks. Some of these are very deep and intimate, others more passing.
Fourth, the activities are contextualized by wider processes such as glob-
alizing and hybridizing. Travel and connection are easier and I was also able to
eat in a Nepalese restaurant in Helsinki (as well as a ‘traditional’ one), see a
salsa band play in a Scandinavian capital city and chat in English in a café
queue there with an American and a Finn who had lived in different parts of
the world. I saw an American ‘alt country’ singer play with a Scottish/Irish
band in a small community hall in the north of Scotland, on a tour promoted
by the Scottish Arts Council to an audience that included ‘local’ people, those
on holiday and those enthusiasts who had travelled some distance.