Page 53 - Cultural Change and Ordinary Life

44 Cultural change and ordinary life

full-time activity (see Crawford 2004; Moorhouse 1991). The identification
of this continuum allows further differentiation in contemporary audience
positions than had hitherto been the case.
However, Hills (2002, 2005) argues that this portrays consumers in a
negative way, especially in the context of an audience continuum:

Abercrombie and Longhurst’s model reproduces exactly the type of
moral dualism which places ‘good’ fandom in opposition to the ‘bad’
consumer. They view ‘the consumer’ as somebody who has the least
amount of skill that they define and study. This view of the consumer is
an essentially negative one: consumers lack the developed forms of
expertise and knowledge that fans, enthusiasts and cultists all possess in
ever-increasing and ever-more-specialised forms.
(Hills 2002: 29)
However, the warrant for this argument seems thin. While it is possible
to discuss the range of particular skills that distinguish points along the con-
tinuum, I do not argue that a ‘moral’ judgement is involved. It would be just as
plausible to say that the continuum morally judges the fan or cultist for his/
her investments in activities that some would see as trivial. Actually neither
of these positions is correct. I am not critical of consumption per se, rather,
consumption is an aspect of ordinary life that is increasingly important,
although I also think that while many of us are knowledgeable in consumer
activities, we are more knowledgeable about other things that mean more to
us. For example, the car for me is a consumer object; I like some and not others
in the sense that the design appeals to me or not and it is a convenient tech-
nology (sometimes) to get me around, but I have little enthusiast investment
in it – I don’t like to tinker, don’t like car racing, and so on. By contrast I am
much more fan-like about popular music. On these terms, I make no moral
judgement about those who possess skills with respect to cars or those who do
not. Especially as those who possess such skills can often be of use to those of us
who do not. Therefore, with respect to fandom, there is not a moral argument
and we sought a useful characterization for further theoretical and empirical
work. It is, of course, possible to consider political and resource issues about car
fandom, but that seems to me to be a different register of discourse.
There are also other issues with the continuum. Thus, it can also be
argued that the audience continuum, as well as being a useful typology ‘may
represent a possible career path under certain conditions’ (Abercrombie and
Longhurst 1998: 141). The key influence here is the work of Stebbins (1992),
but Crawford has now developed the argument, in his discussion of the poten-
tial ‘career progression of a sport fan’ (Crawford 2004: 42–9). This introduces
a number of additional aspects to the continuum that we identified and
therefore takes the model forward in a number of important ways. However,
the basic idea remains intact.

Research questions
The argument for the SPP rests on the claims about the social processes
that were changing to produce the paradigm and that research studies were