Page 73 - Cultural Change and Ordinary Life

64 Cultural change and ordinary life

are considered further in Chapter 7, where I draw extensively on other work
by Devine (especially Devine 2004). In Devine and Savage’s (2005) view this
sort of response ‘is very much a minority concern within the discipline as a
whole, and the dominant approach has been to adopt the view that taking
culture seriously involves breaking from stratification research, at least as con-
ventionally understood’ (p. 11). However, Devine and Savage suggest that a
different approach is both possible and necessary. This means not following
reductive models of class culture and identity, but also and, very importantly,
not suggesting an end to class analysis either.
They argue ‘once class-consciousness is not seen as a “reflex” of class
position, it can be studied in a variety of more innovative ways’ (p. 12). A key
part of this shift is a renewed emphasis on class and identity. They suggest
that this move can be found in the work of a number of writers and that
three themes have run through this new agenda. The first is methodological in
that there has been a shift from quantitative to qualitative methods in the
study of class, as this ‘allows a much fuller account of the nuances of class
identifications’ (p. 12). Second, and very important in the overall context of
this book, is ‘a concern to place awareness in context of people’s everyday
lives, rather than to relate it to abstract expectations of what class awareness
should be, or even might be, like’ (p. 12), which chimes exceptionally well
with the project of this book for the analysis of mediatized ordinary life. Third,
there is:
A common awareness that the complexities and ambivalences of class
awareness should be analysed in their own terms, rather than as a dif-
ficulty to be explained away whether this be through recourse to a domi-
nant ideology, organizational forms, or whatever. This has led to an
interest in thinking through how the ambivalences and complexities of
popular identities and forms of awareness can be understood.
(Devine and Savage 2005: 13)
For Devine and Savage, this leads to an emphasis on the work of Bourdieu,
as the interconnections between his concepts of habitus, capitals and fields pro-
duces a conceptual armoury that ‘points towards a different kind of approach
to culture and subjectivity than in older forms of class analysis’ (p. 14). I have
discussed these aspects of Bourdieu’s work earlier in this book and consider
the significance of his ideas of capital further in the next chapter. Thus it is
possible to consider straightaway how more specifically Devine and Savage
suggest that this theory represents an advance for class theory and research.
There are four points that they emphasize:
First, in contrast to earlier approaches which ‘see awareness as linked
to self-recognition of one’s position in the system, an ability to name your
social location’, Bourdieu’s position ‘is consistent with a structuralist or post-
structuralist theory of language which means that identification, for Bourdieu,
is not based on recognising oneself as belonging to a given position, but as
differentiating oneself from others in a field’ (Devine and Savage 2005: 14).
While this may suggest that awareness is like a game with conscious tactics,
which in some respects it may be, though these sorts of metaphor can be
overextended in social and cultural analysis. There is an issue of intent here,