Page 98 - Cultural Change and Ordinary Life

Capitals and the use of time 89

Discussions of TV are very useful for showing how forms of media consump-
tion allow the ordering of ordinary life. It is important to emphasize that such
ordering does not mean that people write a plan of how they are going to live
their life or spend their time. As Gauntlett and Hill (1999) show to good effect,
such planning is often informal and implicit. These cycles to everyday life
are therefore significant, but also in common with the arguments that I have
mounted during the course of this book so far, becoming more spectacular and
performed. Thus, the events that punctuate and mark these cycles are becom-
ing increasingly salient. As I was writing this in May 2006, the supermarkets
where I live were full of accessories to mark England’s participation in the
football World Cup and many cars were displaying the Flag of St George a full
month before the tournament began. Events like this may not happen every
day, but they do show how the rhythms are being increasingly marked and
marketed.
Finally, it is important to recognize that there is human agency involved
in this situation. People are taking active decisions to display particular flags, to
join or to remove themselves from voluntary associations, to watch particular
programmes on TV and about how best to seek to advance their children’s
education. All these processes can be seen as aspects of the idea of elective
belonging that I have discussed at various points of the book so far. At this
point, it is the elective aspect that requires emphasis. I can elect whether or not
to display the flag and so on. However, it is also to reiterate the perhaps rather
obvious point that there will be other outcomes to these processes than my
action intended. This is well captured by Devine’s discussion of education.
Thus, while parents may make every effort to advance their children’s educa-
tion, this is still subject to a significant degree of uncertainty. Investments are
not always successful. The integration of this level of analysis with the others is
of great importance.
It is important that these common sorts of conclusion can be drawn
from work, which on the face of it has very different theoretical contexts and
different specific objects of analysis. Thus, the different backgrounds discussed
include economics, political science, sociological considerations of class and
media studies. Moreover, specific research topics range from TV to voluntary
associational membership to education. These analyses can be integrated into
an account of ordinary life. Moreover, it also shows, as argued at the start of
this book that ideas about time use, different forms of capital and agency can
be related to significant effect. Moreover, it is important to recognize that the
chapter has also shown by implication how these processes are involved in
distinction. Thus people will want to show that they are not like all the others
who watch too much TV. Moreover, seeking to advance the education of your
children could involve them in doing better than others. While I have sought
on a number of levels to detail the evidence in this chapter, it is important to
recognize the overall significance of these particular processes in the context
where these processes are increasingly performed for other social audiences.