Employing Cornish Cultures for Community Resilience. Submitted by Neil Patrick Martyn Kennedy to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Cornish Studies. Submitted in February 2013. This thesis is available for the library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other university. Signature: …………………………………….. 1 Abstract. Employing Cornish Cultures for Community Resilience. Can cultural distinctiveness be used to strengthen community bonds, boost morale and equip and motivate people socially and economically? Using the witness of people in Cornwall and comparative experiences, this discussion combines a review of how cultures are commodified and portrayed with reflections on well-being and ‘emotional prosperity’.1 Cornwall is a relatively poor European region with a cultural identity that inspires an established ethno-cultural movement and is the symbolic basis of community awareness and aspiration, as well as the subject of contested identities and representations. At the heart of this is an array of cultures that is identified as Cornish, including a distinct post-industrial inheritance, the Cornish Language and Celtic Revivalism. Cultural difference has long been a resource for cultural industries and tourism and discussion of using culture for regeneration has accordingly concentrated almost exclusively on these sectors but an emergent ‘regional distinctiveness agenda’ is beginning to present Cornish cultures as an asset for use in branding and marketing other sectors. All of these uses ultimately involve commodification but culture potentially has a far wider role to play in fostering economic, social, cultural and environmental resilience. This research therefore uses multidisciplinary approaches to broaden the discussion to include culture’s primary emotional and social uses. It explores the possibility that enhancing these uses could help to tackle economic and social disadvantage and to build more cohesive communities. The discussion centres on four linked themes: 1 Simon Charlesworth (2000), A Phenomenology of Working Class Experience, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. 2 multiple forms of capital;2 discourse, narrative and myth; human need, emotion and well-being; representation and intervention. Cultural, social, symbolic and human capital are related to collective status and well-being through consideration of cultural practices, repertoires and knowledge. These are explored with discussion of accompanying representations and discourses and their social, emotional and economic implications so as to allow tentative suggestions for intervention in policy and representation. A key conclusion is that culture may be used proactively to increase ‘emotional capital’.3 2 Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Les trois états du capital culturel’, in Actes de la recherch en sciences sociales, vol. 30, (November 1979), L’Institution Scolaire, pp. 3-6; 3 Diane Reay (2004), ‘Gendering Bourdieu’s concept of capitals?: Emotional Capital, Women and Social Class’, in L. Adkins and B. Skeggs (eds.). Feminism after Bourdieu, London: Blackwell. 3 Key words. belongingness, branding, cultural capital, Celticity, commodification, Cornish language, Cornishness, cultural hygiene, cultural tourism, deprivation, difference, disadvantage, discourse, emotional capital, ethnicity, exchange-value, habitus, hegemony, hyper-reality, local knowledge, motivation, myth, mythology, narrative, networking, otherness, regeneration, representation, resilience, social capital, sustainability, symbolic capital, usable culture, use-value, useable culture, well-being. 4 Unite and unite and let us all unite, for summer is acome unto day, and whither we are going we will all unite, in the merry morning of May.4 4 Words traditionally sung at Padstow on Mayday. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwSv8YEr78g (May 2012) 5 Acknowledgements. This study has been made possible by the willingingness of a very large number of people to talk about their experiences and share their social and cultural activities. Some deserve special mention. Sharon Lowenna has provided constant encouragement and informed discussion, Jenefer Lowe has been ready to talk over Cornish language matters, Kim Cooper, Tristan Berry and their colleagues from the Cornish Studies Library have been at hand to help, Gus Williams of Camborne School of Mines and Phil Hosken of the Trevithick Society have offered observations and support and Jan Lobb, Julie Tamblin and Ed Curry of the Cornish Language Council have maintained a sense of worthwhile purpose. Everyone at the University of Exeter’s post- graduate office and at the Tremough Campus has been friendly and helpful. I should like to thank my supervisors Bernard Deacon, Philip Payton and Garry Tregidga, not just for their official roles but for having largely shaped the ‘New Cornish Studies’ that has allowed this research to happen. Finally, my partner, Catherine Le Blay, has been forebearing and my parents have offered moral support. 6 Table of Contents. Chapter One: An Introduction to Useable Culture. Page 8. Chapter Two: Methodologies for Taking Part and Taking Sides. Page 34. Chapter Three: The New Cornwall and the Cornish Movement. Page 60. Chapter Four: Cornish Culture and Capital. Page 95. Chapter Five: Cornish Cultural Hygienes. Page 126. Chapter Six: ‘Proper Cornish’: Revivalism and Residual Tradition. Page 172. Chapter Seven: Cornish Linguistic Landscape. Page 208. Chapter Eight: Cool Cornubia: Branding Celtic Cornwall. Page 248. Chapter Nine: Kernow or Kernowland? Page 284. Bibliography. Page 331. Frequently Accessed websites. Page 364. 7 Chapter One An Introduction to Useable Culture. The working proposition or pro-position adopted here is that ‘distinctive Cornish cultures’, including the Cornish language, may be deployed usefully in efforts to create sustainable communities or in current parlance, to build social and economic ‘resilience’, including the strength to adapt and respond to events.5 This complements the stated ambition of the Objective One Programme for Cornwall and Scilly which links ‘distinctiveness’ to inclusiveness and prosperity: To achieve a step change in the prosperity of Cornwall and Scilly, making it a place where people and communities have equal access to opportunities and to a quality of life which arise from the sustainable development of its economy and its environment and the enhancement of its distinctiveness.6 Accordingly, this thesis elaborates a particular interpretation of ‘regional distinctiveness’ (the fifth of five Objective One priorities) by embracing the idea that a definably Cornish cultural tradition may be employed inclusively and constructively to strengthen communities that have been socially weakened by economic and demographic changes which are discussed. A questionable opening premise is that the ever- changing relations between heterogeneous communities and their cultures are crucial to how they work socially and therefore to how they function economically. The subjective view is also taken that local cultures and languages have worth as part of the collective stock of human experience and knowledge. Indeed, maintaining them features 5 ‘Distinctiveness’, ‘sustainability’ and ‘resilience’ are current buzz-words in local government. 6 ‘Objective One Programme for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly - Single Programming Document’, (December 2005). 8 in the aims of government and international sustainability agendas and they are part of what diverse critics and activists around the world wish to retain under the homogenizing conditions of globalization and consumer capitalism.7 Analogies are sometimes made between biodiversity as necessary to a healthy planet and cultural diversity as life-enriching and necessary to ‘a healthy cultural world’8 and geographically rooted cultures may even be viewed from such perspectives as ‘bioregionalism’ as bringing people together and binding them to their environment, locality and economy with benefits for each.9 In much the same spirit it is proposed that Cornish cultures, like others, include local knowledge and useful resources that may be employed in addressing and setting sustainability objectives in such diverse areas as economic initiative, education, housing, land management and environmental planning.10 Serendipitously, a piece of unusual graffiti on the site of the planned Cornish History Centre reads, ‘Never underestimate the power of local knowledge.’ (23rd November 2012) and in recent economic and community strategies for Cornwall both the ‘knowledge-based economy’ and ‘regional distinctiveness’ are seen, in the banal jargon of committees, as underlying ‘sustainable economic development’.11 Even so, few attempts have yet been made to genuinely link these elements or coherently explore what they could mean. The nearest institutional attempts are perhaps those implicit in campaigns for Cornwall to become a ‘European Region of Culture’ where the belief that local culture may be enabling and bonding is one of the motives for a Cornwall Council-led community initiative that emphasizes the social benefits of active, grass-roots participation, - often on a small and intimate scale, - rather than the passive 7 cf. Sustainability agenda’s