Stockholm Studies in Sociology New Series 47
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ACTA UNIVERSITATIS STOCKHOLMIENSIS Stockholm Studies in Sociology New Series 47 Class, Place and Identity in a Satellite Town Elias le Grand © Elias le Grand and Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, Stockholm 2010 ISSN 0491-0885 ISBN 978-91-86071-50-9 Printed in Sweden by US-AB Tryck & Media, Stockholm 2010 Distributor: eddy.se ab, Visby, Sweden Cover image by Claudia Young To my parents. Contents Acknowledgements ix 1. Introduction: Class, Place, Identity 1 The ‘Chav’ Phenomenon 2 Theoretical Framework 4 Youth Studies, Identity, Class and Place 9 Chapter Outline 22 2. Knowing the Field 25 Reflexivity in Ethnographic Research 27 A Stranger in Satellite Town 29 A Multi- Method Ethnography 34 Analysis 36 3. Creating a Folk Devil: The Moral Panic over ‘Chavs’ 39 The Emergence of a Moral Panic 40 The Creation of a Folk Devil 42 A Contested Public Issue 46 A Question of Taste 49 A Question of Morals 53 Chav Space 58 Consequences of the Moral Panic 61 Conclusion 71 4. Sense of Place 73 Constructing a Marginal Space 73 Images of a ‘Chav Town’ 77 Entering Satellite Town 78 ‘Strong Sense of Community’ 83 Danger and Safety in Satellite Town 89 Belonging and Mobility 94 Conclusion: Ambiguous Place Images 97 5. Markers of Taste 101 Identifying Chavs 102 Disidentifications 109 Tattoos as Inscriptions of Love 114 Emos, Goths and Mark the ‘Chemo’ 117 Against Middle- Class Taste 121 Conclusion: Tainted Markers of Taste 125 6. Putting up a Front 129 Modes of Self- Presentation 131 Performing Masculinity 133 Challenging Authority 140 Conclusion 148 7. Conclusions 151 Appendix: Non- Ethnographic Sources 159 References 163 First of all, I am really grateful to all the young people in Satellite Town who took part in this study. Many thanks also to Gary at Northside and Sarah at Greenwood. Apologies are due to Nicky and Sarah for what happened that fateful evening more than two years ago. Hopefully, I learnt something from it. Patrik Aspers has been an enthusiastic and inspiring supervisor through- out the project. His continuous support, encouragement and belief in my work have been invaluable. I owe him a lot. I am also grateful to my associ- ate supervisor Lars Udehn, who contributed with many thoughtful comments and suggestions. The study would not have developed as it did, or maybe not been realized at all, without the great generosity of Bev Skeggs, who let me spend 14 months at the Sociology Department at Goldsmiths, University of London. Bev also suggested that I do the study in Satellite Town. At Goldsmiths, I also want to thank Kimberly Keith, Bridget Ward, Anamik Saha, Helena Holgersson and Madli Maruste. During the initial stages of fieldwork, Alex Hensby at Roehampton University generously shared some useful tips and advice on how to proceed. I want to thank friends and colleagues at the Department of Sociology, Stockholm University, who lit up its dull corridors with their presence. Warm thanks in particular to Lambros Roumbanis and Daniel Castillo, with- out whom these past years certainly wouldn’t have been as enjoyable. I also want to thank Lambros for his many valuable ideas and suggestions on this project, and for his support during its final weeks. Other colleagues have read and provided valuable comments on the text. I am grateful to Stina Blix, Caroline Dahlberg, Barbara Hobson, Magnus Haglunds, Martin Hällsten, Jens Rydgren and Betty Thompson. Thanks also to Göran Ahrne, Isabelle Andersson, Maria Bagger-Sjöbäck, Karin Bergmark, Nihad Bunar, Moa Bursell, Gergei Farkas, Thomas Florén, Saemundur Grettisson, Karin Halldén, Maria Lind, Thomas Nordgren, Mikaela Sundberg, Richard Swed- berg and Maria Törnqvist. I am very grateful to Mats Trondman at Linnaeus University, who was the discussant at my ‘final seminar’, where the bulk of my thesis was presented. His many valuable comments and suggestions on the manuscript certainly helped to improve it. The Network for the Studies of Cultural Distinctions and Social Differen- tiation (SCUD) provided a stimulating intellectual and social environment, and I am really grateful to Johs Hjellbrekke for letting me participate in the network. A draft of what is essentially Chapter 4 in this book was presented at the last SCUD workshop at the Open University in April 2010. I am grate- ful to workshop participants, particularly Mike Savage who was the discuss- ant, as well as Annick Prieur and Kristoffer Chelsom Vogt, for their con- structive comments and suggestions. I also want to thank Vegard Jarness and Nobumi Kobayashi-Hillary. Warm thanks to Lena Gunnarsson from whom I have learnt a lot. Lena also read and provided valuable criticism on the text. And my gratitude goes to Pär Engholm for his sharp comments and intellectual passion, and for our enduring friendship. Apologies are due for losing track of time all those times in London. Thanks also to Maria Bäckman for advice on ethnographic fieldwork, to Raoul Galli for constructive input, and to Karen Rockow for professional and thorough proof-reading. I have dedicated this book to my fantastic parents, Toshiko and Carl. I am immensely grateful for all the love and support they have given me through- out the years. Love and thanks also to my brother Taro and his wife Ulrika. Finally, I want to send my heartfelt thanks and love to Claudia. ͳǤ ǣǡ ǡ This multi-method ethnography—written from the perspective of a Swedish, Anglophilic, middle-class academic—is primarily based on fieldwork con- ducted in an area situated on the periphery of one of south London’s outer boroughs, a borough with a large, centrally located town as its ‘capital’. Ly- ing in the margins of the borough, the area is, to quote one of the locals, ‘the satellite town of a satellite town’. I will call it Satellite Town for short. Satel- lite Town is predominantly working-class, white—although with a signifi- cant Black African and Caribbean population—and with a history of social marginalization including a large proportion of council house estates and high rates of intergenerational unemployment and teenage pregnancy. I lived in the area for five months, and worked as a volunteer youth worker at the two youth clubs located in the area, on and off for about a year. I also con- ducted extensive studies of web sites, news media and popular culture. The book focuses on the white, working-class youths of Satellite Town. Its central purpose is to examine the processes of identity formation among these young people, particularly in relation to class and place. Identity is a multi-facetted concept and we will deal with it in more depth shortly, but for now, suffice to say that it is about the dynamic and dialectic processes be- tween identity constructed from the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’. Identity as constructed from the ‘inside’ involves inquiring how the respondents con- struct their self-identities. How do they perform their selves through dress, gesture, posture, ways of speaking and so forth? And how are these perform- ances acted out in different social contexts? What people, practices and ob- jects do they identify with or disassociate from, and on what grounds? And further, what is their ‘sense of’ and relationship to place? That is to say, what sense of belonging do they express to different places—where do they feel at home or, conversely, out of place? How is their sense of safety related to different places? What is their mobility in space, and what constraints and opportunities in this regard do they experience? Identity constructed from the ‘outside’ involves how the respondents are categorized by others. How are they represented and positioned in public codes and narratives? How do other people talk about them? What conse- quences do these categorizations have for their self-identities? Are they aware of these categorizations, and if so, how is this awareness experienced and expressed? ͳ But while the study is about the formation of identity among these young people, we need to recognize that ethnographic knowledge is not generated from a disembodied, objective view from nowhere, but always in relation to a situated, positioned and embodied researcher who brings her particular experiences and preconceptions to the analysis. The fact that this study is about the white, young people of Satellite Town cannot be separated from the fact that it is made and written by a middle-class Swede situated in a white, British, working-class space. In parts of this study, I have striven to carefully use my own experiences in relation to the field and its actors as a source of limited, although potentially important, sociological insight. Thus, as I argue in Chapter 2, including the ethnographic self in one’s account enables not only greater transparency, accountability and reflexivity, but is also epistemologically productive. Ǯǯ The wider context and the raison d’être for undertaking this study—which is explored more in-depth in Chapter 3—is the recent emergence of a moral panic in the British public realm1 about white, working-class youths labelled ‘chavs’. The term is commonly used to denote white British youths dressed in tracksuits, sneakers, baseball caps, designer brands and jewellery. The moral panic emerged in the early years of the 21st century, where ‘chav’ became a widely discussed and contested issue in news media as well as on blogs and web sites (Hayward & Yar, 2006; Tyler, 2008). In 2004 ‘chav’ was chosen the buzzword of the year in a book published by Oxford Univer- sity Press (Dent, 2004) and included in the Collins English Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary. The figure of the chav has become a highly stigmatized stereotype, a ‘folk devil’ against which strong moral-aesthetic boundaries are constructed, often through mockery.