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A Multi-Sensory Ethnography of Class and Multiculture in East London

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A Multi-Sensory Ethnography of Class and Multiculture in East London GOLDSMITHS Research Online Thesis (PhD) Rhys-Taylor, Alex Coming to our senses: a multi-sensory ethnography of class and multiculture in East London You may cite this version as: Rhys-Taylor, Alex, 2010. Coming to our senses: a multi-sensory ethnography of class and multiculture in East London. PhD thesis, Goldsmiths. [Thesis]: Goldsmiths Research Online. Available at: http://eprints.gold.ac.uk/3226/ COPYRIGHT This is a thesis accepted for a Higher Degree of the University of London. It is an unpublished document and the copyright is held by the author. All persons consulting this thesis must read and abide by the Copyright Declaration below. COPYRIGHT DECLARATION I recognise that the copyright and other relevant Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) of the above- described thesis rests with the author and/or other IPR holders and that no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author. ACCESS A non-exclusive, non-transferable licence is hereby granted to those using or reproducing, in whole or in part, the material for valid purposes, providing the copyright owners are acknowledged using the normal conventions. Where specific permission to use material is required, this is identified and such permission must be sought from the copyright holder or agency cited. REPRODUCTION All material supplied via Goldsmiths Library and Goldsmiths Research Online (GRO) is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, and duplication or sale of all or part of any of the Data Collections is not permitted, except that material may be duplicated by you for your research use or for educational purposes in electronic or print form. You must obtain permission for any other use. Electronic or print copies may not be offered, whether for sale or otherwise to anyone. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. http://eprints-gro.goldsmiths.ac.uk Contact Goldsmiths Research Online at: [email protected] Coming to Our Senses: A Multisensory Exploration of Class and Multiculture in East London By Alex Rhys-Taylor Sociology Goldsmiths College University of London Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) 2010 Acknowledgements! 4 Introduction: Coming to Our Senses! 5 The Insensible Urban 6 The Sense in Sensory Sociology 11 The Social (Re)Production of Sensibility 15 Non-Histories and the Senses 20 Conclusion and a Taste of Things to Come 23 A Short Walk: Introduction to Methods and Locations! 26 Hanging Around 26 Walking 28 Recording and Representing the ‘Other Senses’: Pictures 30 Recording and Representing the Other Senses: Words 33 Disclosure and The Right to be Represented 35 Locations 39 Prevailing Breezes 44 Slime and Reason: Gut Feelings and Social Stratification! 50 What Is In A Squirm? 54 Epistemological Slipperiness 60 Classy Tastes 66 Seafood, Sex and Gendered Space 74 The Space that Difference Makes 79 The Real Danger of Dirt 82 Conclusion 85 Dirty Stories: Space, Race and the Senses! 88 The Battles of Ridley Road 90 Rotten: The Limits of a ‘Cosmopolitan’ Sensibility 95 Aping Stories: The Sensuous Sediments of Colonialism 103 Sensation, Aesthetics and The Market 110 Conclusion: Gut Feelings 115 Blends of Global Aromas: The Sensory Production of a Local Multiculture! 120 An Olfactory Inventory of Everyday Multiculture 123 Colonialism and the Flavour of Multiculture 134 Entrepreneurialism, Multiculture and the Senses 137 Tastes of Necessity? 139 Tactical Tastes 142 Global Identities and Local Culture 145 Loosing Touch with Vision 147 Conclusion 150 Strangers in a Port City: Decoding Local Taste! 155 EastEnders 157 The Acquisition of Local Taste 162 ’Ello Stranger 173 A Bit of the Other 177 Season to Taste 180 Rivers Rekindled, and Culture Remade 182 The Senses and Social Formation! 191 Sensory Paradoxes 198 The Senses, Subjects and Subjugation 200 Social Formation, Cramped Space and The Senses 205 Exclusivist Politics, ‘The Market’ and The Senses 207 Coming to Our Senses 215 Methodological Afterword! 221 Accessing Ambient Experience 222 Acquiring Tastes 225 Sensing Boundaries 226 The Value of Experiential Knowledge 230 Appendix A: Dalston, Employment and Ethnicity! 232 Bibliography! 233 Acknowledgements My acknowledgments start, as did this entire project, with my supervisor Les Back, whose capacious sociological imagination inspired this work and whose support – from its inception – made it possible. I am also indebted to Natasha Polyviou for bringing me with her to east London, and for making the experience of living and working here so enriching and enjoyable, that it our became home. I owe a special gratitude to everybody that has let me bring my thoughts on this project to the table, even when those thoughts have been about cannibalism, and the table was set for dinner. I am also indebted to everybody that has let me integrate the favour-laden-rhythm of their everyday routines into my life. Of this latter group, I am especially grateful to Paul Simpson and Dickson for the enduring hospitality and humour with which they greeted my presence. From the homeless man in Spitalfields who offered a robust defense of Durkheimean thought, through everybody that squirmed at the eel-eaters of Petticoat Lane, to the eel-eaters themselves, there are many whose conversations, comments and convulsions have contributed to this study, and whose names I will never know. I am especially grateful to these people for the fragments of their lives that they shared with me. They are at the core of this study. I am needless to say, indebted to the institutions that have provided the space – and money – to pursue this research; to the ESRC and to Goldsmiths College more generally, but especially to Goldsmiths Sociology for fostering a remarkable intellectual community. Within this department, a special thanks to Vanessa Arena for the constant culinary curiosity and to Hannah Jones, whose parallel negotiation of research, work and life in east London have provided both inspiration and solace. Acknowledgment is also due to Ben Gidley, with whom I first sounded out this project, and to Michael Keith, who probably had as much influence on this work in his capacity as leader of Tower Hamlets Council as he did as director of the research centre in which it germinated. On which note, I would also like to acknowledge the very special space that is the Centre for Urban and Community Research – my first destination when I arrived in London eight years ago, and a home from home since. Within that space I would like to note the special friendship – and occasional confectionary – offered by Kimberly Keith, and Emma Jackson, alongside whom I jogged, and to Anamik Saha, who set the pace. Of other fellow travelers I would also like to acknowledge the friendship offered by Patrick Turner and Stephen Jones, and especially by Jane Round. Thanks are also owed to the Museum of London for access to archaeological relics and debates, and likewise to the staff at the Hackney Archives for the assistance in sifting through local sediments. Acknowledgment is also due to Adam Kaasa, Fran Tonkiss, Vic Seidler, Nick Couldry, Richard Sennet and my peers at NYLON for the patient reading and re-reading of various drafts, and for allowing this work to be part of a transatlantic dialogue. Thanks also to Katherine Davies and the Real Life Methods team at Manchester University, and likewise to Tim Edensnor, Helena Holgersson and everybody at Cultural Studies in Gothenburg. Your interest in this work truly surprised me, and mitigated the fear of self-indulgence that such enjoyable pursuits might have induced. Special acknowledgement is also owed to Angela Triggs for stepping in when finance departments failed, and to Tristan Rhys-Taylor. Here’s to your health brother. Introduction: Coming to Our Senses Ali is a quiet man, a trader, born in Pakistan, living in east London. He has worked in his open-fronted shop, located to the side of an east London street market, for the last fifteen years. Ridley Road market is busy six days a week, and for the last century has fed local residents with a wide range of fruits, vegetables and meats. In many respects, Ali, the east London market trader, born in Pakistan is an exemplary “assimilationist hero.”1 In the context of an east London street market, however, ‘assimilation’ looks, smells and tastes quite different than is normally understood. While being interviewed by a sociologist, Ali arranges transparent polythene bags of dried salt fish, sorrel, dried gungo beans and yellow plastic tubs of salted ox tongue he had picked up in the early hours from a nearby wholesaler of Afro-Caribbean food. He takes a break from arranging his stall to barter over some powdered yam with a particularly curt Nigerian woman, before returning to preparations for the day. Having arranged his products, Ali lights incense sticks to ward off the smell of the neighbouring fishmonger and the seagulls it attracts. The woody smell of sandalwood mixes with a faint hint of cloves that fills the open fronted shop. As he swings for one of the seagulls, a female voice emerges from the market crowd, seemingly laughing at him. The owner of the locally inflected chuckle reveals herself as Angela, a thirty-five year old British woman, born to Caribbean parents. The shopping list she carries in her head is for the ingredients she acquired a taste for in early adulthood: beans, salted fish, scotch-bonnet peppers and a small bag of what she affectionately calls “my spices;” She enters the shop, and greets Ali, her friend, before being introduced to the sociologist that 1 A figure idealised within the social policy discourse of the last two decades.
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