Globalization and Belonging

Theory, Culture & Society caters for the resurgence of interest in culture within contemporary social science and the humanities. Building on the heritage of classical social theory the book series examines ways in which this tradition has been reshaped by a new generation of theorists. It also publishes theoretically informed analyses of everyday life, popular culture, and new intellectual movements.

EDITOR: Mike Featherstone, Nottingham Trent University

SERIES EDITORIAL BOARD

Roy Boyne, University of Durham

Mike Hepworth, University of Aberdeen

Scott Lash, Goldsmiths College, University of London

Roland Robertson, University of Aberdeen

Bryan S. Turner, University of Cambridge

THE TCS CENTRE

The Theory, Culture & Society book series, the journals Theory, Culture & Society and Body & Society, and related conference, seminar and postgraduate programmes operate from the TCS Centre at Nottingham Trent University. For further details of the TCS Centre's activities please contact:

Centre Administrator

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Recent volumes include:

Sex and Manners

Cas Wouters

The Body and Social Theory

Chris Shilling

Religion, Realism and Social Theory

Phillip A. Mellor

The Body in Culture, Technology and Society

Chris Shilling

• Table 1.1: Percent of households in each area falling into various ACORN postcode categories 20
• Table 1.2: Statistics of achieved sample 21
• Table 2.1: Response to the question: ‘What kind of people live round here?’ 32
• Table 2.2: Numbers of respondents' references to occupations and/or class in response to the question: ‘What kind of people live round here?’ 34
• Table 2.3: Areas where respondents were brought up 45
• Table 2.4: Location of kin 46
• Table 2.5: Percentage of those brought up in different places who feel they belong in area of current residence 47
• Table 3.1: Respondents with children and age of children 57
• Table 3.2: Respondents with children in education and mode of schooling 63
• Table 3.3: Respondents involved with PTA and type of involvement 72
• Table 4.1: Neighbouring practices 84
• Table 4.2: Percentage of respondents referring to London in various ways 94
• Table 4.3: Strength and orientation of place identifications 102
• Table 5.1: Respondents use of Manchester's urban space 114
• Table 5.2: Use of cultural facilities in Manchester centre 120
• Table 5.3: Urban and regional identification of respondents 124
• Table 6.1: The organisation of friendship 143
• Table 7.1: Non-prompted mentions of television programmes 158
• Table 7.2: Possession of cable and satellite television 160
• Table 7.3: Type of reference to music by respondents 169
• Table 7.4: Reading practices 171
• Table 7.5: Geography of cultural referents 174
[Page vii]
• Table 8.1: Ethnic identification of respondents 183
• Table 8.2: Overseas contacts of respondents 187
• Map 1.1: Location of case study areas 18
• Map 2.1: Map of Greater Manchester locations 40
• Map 5.1: Map of Central Manchester locations 111

The origins of this book date from 1996 when the Economic and Social Research Council (to whom we are duly grateful) funded our project called ‘Lifestyles and Social Integration: a study of middle-class culture in Manchester’. The aims of the research project were influenced by what Rosemary Crompton (1998) has identified as the ‘employment aggregate’ approach to class analysis. This perspective, associated with sociologists such as John Goldthorpe and Gordon Marshall, considers how people's class position within employment relationships affects their life chances and actions, such as their educational achievement (famously, Halsey et al. 1980), or political orientations (Heath et al. 1985, 1991; Evans 1999). We were aware that this perspective had not been much applied to the study of consumption, leisure practices and lifestyles (though see Savage et al. 1992, and subsequent discussions in Butler and Savage 1995; Chaney 1996; Lury 1997; Warde 1997 for partial exceptions), and were especially interested to map differences in middle-class lifestyles. Our plan, therefore, was to use qualitative methods to expand our understanding of consumption patterns and lifestyles within the middle-class, focusing on four local areas chosen to exemplify potentially different forms of middle-class culture. We were concerned to pay particular attention to the local contexts in which consumption took place, drawing upon Gaynor Bagnall's and Brian Longhurst's earlier research on audiences (Longhurst and Savage 1996; Bagnall 1996, 1998; Abercrombie and Longhurst 1998).

The research was conducted between 1997 and 1999, and duly led to a clutch of papers (Longhurst et al. 2001; Savage 2000; Savage et al. 2001; Savage et al. 2004a; Bangnall et al. 2003). However, we did not have time to fully write up our research immediately after completing the fieldwork. Gaynor took up her first lecturing post at Liverpool John Moores University with all the demands that a new job entailed. Brian became Director of the Institute for Social Research (and later Head of the School of English, Sociology, Politics and Contemporary History) at the University of Salford, and Mike became Head of the Sociology Department at the University of Manchester. In addition, we all had the demands of young children! While we had time to ‘mine’ the data for issues of particular interest, such as class identity (Savage et al. 2001), or radio listening (Longhurst et al. 2001), we did not have the chance to analyse the interview data as a whole, much of which was left untouched until 2002. The bulk of the data was analysed and the book written from summer 2002 to summer 2003 when Mike had a year's [Page ix]sabbatical. Mike therefore took the lead, with input from Gaynor and Brain, in writing up what had been very much a team project.

When we came to write this book, our framing concerns had shifted. Mike's Class Analysis and Social Transformation (2000), written after we collected the data but before we fully analysed it, saw him becoming more sceptical of the scope of the ‘employment aggregate’ approach to class analysis for the understanding of consumption and lifestyle. He argued that while close relationships between class position and life-chances could be detected, there was little evidence that identity, values and lifestyles were so directly linked. This was of course a familiar (though largely untested) claim in much sociological writing of this period (see for instance Chaney 1996). We became increasingly interested in understanding the local contexts in which we carried out our interviews, and understanding the relationship between locale, lifestyles and identities. Rather then seeing class cultures and lifestyles as fundamentally the product of occupation and employment, could we instead see them as arising out of residential processes?

This new interest chimed in with research demonstrating the significance of place for outcomes in the areas of health, political alignments, and so on. But it raised its own can of worms. We needed to consider how our research related to older debates in community studies and urban sociology regarding the significance of place, neighbourhood and community. More seriously still, it was not clear what theoretical warrant there was for emphasising local processes when, in a globalised world, people and objects were held to be mobile. Furthermore, given the general acceptance that neighbourhoods are not now (even if they ever were) face-to-face communities, how could we understand the salience of place? We became preoccupied by resolving these issues, which led us to put the analysis of middle-class cultures, consumption and lifestyles into a different theoretical frame.

In the end we have written a book about the nature of local belonging in a global world. We hope that we have cast our local case studies in a way that will be interesting to a wide audience, including people who have no interest in, or knowledge of, the North West of England. The strength of our book, we would like to think, is in the quality of the interviews we carried out. There is no shortage of sophisticated theoretical frameworks, but there is very little empirical research which allows us to explore what globalisation ‘on the ground’ entails. This is the gap that we hope our book addresses in an interesting – and perhaps provocative – way!

The first chapter rehearses our theoretical concerns and lays out our methodology. Chapter 1 argues that while globalisation theory is deeply concerned with understanding the relationship between the global and the local, we need to distinguish those approaches which see the local simply as an instance of epochal global change, and those which see the local as irritant. Taking up the latter approach through the insights of Arjun Appadurai, Walter Benjamin and Doreen Massey, we show how Pierre Bourdieu's social theory might be extended to understand how people might feel they belong in certain contexts. Chapter 1 also briefly outlines [Page x]and defends our methodology, and introduces our choice of Manchester as a suitable place to examine these issues.

Chapter 2 is possibly the most important chapter in the book in introducing our core concept of elective belonging. We show that people's feeling of belonging is not linked to any historical roots they may have in the area. Indeed, those relatively few people who are ‘born and bred’ in the place where they still live often feel ill at ease there. However, we also show that people are critical of those who they see as transients, with no ties to the place they now live in. Our concept of elective belonging argues that places are not characterised by tensions between insiders and outsiders but that instead they are defined as locales for people electing to belong (and not just reside) in specific places.

This argument is elaborated in later chapters. Chapter 3 shows that bringing up children plays a key role in this process of electing to belong. In-migrants who bring up children, talk about the way that this makes them feel at home. However, following the work of Ball (2002) and Butler and Robson (2003a) we show how such groups are concerned with the local politics of schooling, and how belonging is therefore related to the wider spatial organization of the educational field. Choosing to belong to a place hence involves comparing places and invoking a relational frame of awareness.

Chapter 4 takes this argument further by showing how people's sense of feeling at home depends not on their attachment to some kind of face-to-face community but to the way that they connect their location to other places that they prize. In a world with global connections, residents routinely associate the place that they live with other places, sometimes places at a significant distance such as London. However, we also show that these kinds of networks of the cultural imaginary are not fully global in scope: the spatial references rarely stretch beyond the British Isles.

Chapter 5 considers how our respondents talked about the city of Manchester. For all our four areas, Manchester was the nearest major city, and most respondents had very clear and emotive views about the city. We show, however, that the significance of Manchester is not that where people feel loyalty to a community with which they are bound. Rather, people's perceptions of the city are related to their visualisation of its special sites and its role as centre of high culture. We use these findings to criticise arguments associated with the ‘LA School’ regarding the fragmentation and decentralisation of urban space, and lend critical support to Le Gales's recent emphasis on the distinctive character of European cities.

Chapter 6 considers how work cultures affects the nature of social ties, and allows us to examine the extent of class formation in our four areas. We show that people's friendship patterns and interaction with work colleagues is remarkably differentiated, with little overlap between these spheres. There is relatively little spill over between work and social life, leading us to doubt that there are any marked processes of class formation currently visible.

Chapter 7 explores the role of the media in the cultural imaginary of our respondents. The media is often seen as central to the organisation of global [Page xi]cultural flows, yet we show how people's media use is more complex than such a view might suppose. People distance themselves from media use, and emphasise their agency choosing what they watch. We show how people are concerned to mark place in their narratives of the media use, and we demonstrate, against the claims of globalisation theory, that the spatial range of most cultural references is highly delimited.

Chapter 8 focuses specifically on people's global reflexivity to consider how they talked about global issues and connections. We argue for the value of seeing our respondents as part of a British imperial diaspora, with connections spread to other parts of the English speaking world, but with little other contact. We show how limited people's sense of global reflexivity actually is, and argue that the concept of cosmopolitanism has little value in accounting for global awareness. Finally, we lay out our main arguments with respect to globalisation theory in the Conclusion.

Turning to our acknowledgements, we would like to thank Sage (and Chris Rojek and the Theory, Culture and Society team in particular) for agreeing to publish our book. In a period when it is ever more difficult to publish research-based books, we sincerely thank them for their support, and hope they are happy with the result. Sage's reader, Frank Webster, helped us to sharpen our final manuscript. It should be noted that we have not had space to report all the findings germane to our concerns. Readers who are interested in how our arguments relate to debates on social capital might therefore wish to consult Bagnall et al. (2003), Savage et al. (2004, 2005), on social class (Savage et al. 2004b).

Needless to say, we have learnt much from many people during this project. First and foremost we are obviously grateful to the ESRC for their support (and more particularly, the support of its referees) without which this book could not have been written. During the early stages of the research project we were guided by a steering group which included Steve Edgell (Salford), Ronnie Frankenberg (Brunel/Keele), Karen Evans (Liverpool), Rosemary Mellor (Manchester), Roger Silverstone (LSE), Derek Wynne (Manchester Metropolitan University) and Roger Burrows (University of York). Rosemary and Derek have both sadly died since the project began and we would like to think that there are traces of their influence in this study. Paul Joyce helped with data analysis. As the book took shape we have benefited enormously from the conversations and interest of Nick Abercrombie, Lisa Adkins, Stephen Ball, Tony Bennett, Talja Blokland, Tim Butler, Eamonn Carrabine, Garry Crawford, Nick Crossley, Fiona Devine, Rob Flynn, Peter Halfpenny, Sylvia Hayes, Helen Hills, Johs Hjellbrekke, Tony Kearon, Dan Laughey, Patrick Legales, Annemarie Money, Bev Skeggs, Alan Warde, and Paul Watt. We certainly have not been able to satisfy them on all the points they have raised, but we are flattered that from their diverse positions they have wanted to engage with our work. Mike would particularly like to thank Fiona Devine, Bev Skeggs and Alan Warde for helping him to explore many of the issues about class, stratification and culture – often over a congenial glass of wine!

[Page xii]Versions of chapters have been given to the following audiences who we thank for their comments: British Sociological Association Annual Conferences (1997, 1999, 2002); The Legacy of the Frankfurt School in Cultural Studies conference (Salford 1998) Cultural Studies and Interdisciplinarity: Difference, Otherness, Dialogue, Translation conference (Leeds 2000) Cultural Change and Urban Contexts conference (Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan and Salford 2000) Crossroads in Cultural Studies conference (Tampere 2002) the Turkish Oral History Foundation (Istanbul 2003); the Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of Essex; Liverpool John Moores University; University of Manchester University of Salford University of Sheffield University of Leicester Open University University of Lancaster and Unilever.

Finally, Mike would like to thank Helen and Isambard for sharing the experience of ‘elective belonging’ in Withington, South Manchester. Gaynor would like to thank Graham, Claire, and Jack for all their support and especially for ‘dancing on a Saturday night’ and her Mum, Doreen for always being there. Brian would like to thank Bernadette, James and Tim for continuing to share it all.