Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Conclusion
My analysis of the consumption of garden lifestyle texts, using ethnographic
evidence 'from below' reveals that media public relations, advertising and marketing
strategies work effectively to secure the audiences they target, especially in relation to
class. In this way, this chapter argues that Bourdieu's (1986) model of capitals offers
explanatory power both to the textual production of how lifestyle texts represent
class and to how audiences receive and consume them. The uneven distribution
of different types of capital determines access to lifestyle ideas; in this way, those
without the requisite capitals lack the competencies to be able to consume legitimate
middle-class aesthetics. These patterns of consumption illustrate the chain, from
production to consumption, of how class inequalities are concretised, perpetuated
and experienced as power relations. It argues that while class determined what
and how people consumed lifestyle texts, age was also a barrier to the reception of
lifestyle ideas: working-class older people simply lacked the economic resources to
even allow themselves to be subjectively addressed by lifestyle ideas.
Class was also significant for how people regarded the social value of the garden
lifestyle programme. I argue that working-class viewers regarded their uses as both
educational and productive. Historically denied respectability (Skeggs 1997), I argue
in chapter 6 that the drive to both acquire and secure respectability through garden
aesthetics was especially salient for my working-class respondents. Aware that
there were members of their class who refused to 'improve' in ways which fuelled
representations of the working-class as lazy and worthless, this chapter shows that
these gardeners saw the lifestyle programme as an educational aid which might urge
the lazy working-class contingent to get motivated about gardening. In this way,
these gardeners recognised and valued the civic aims of lifestyle because of their
class location.
However, this chapter also argues that the macro changes identified by
contemporary social theory - such as for example, the transition from 'ways of life'
to lifestyle - are not yet in evidence in the micro context of the small British semi-
industrial town. For the bulk of my respondents, gardening remains a traditional
enthusiasm, fastened to a relatively stable sense of a 'way of life'. While the lifestyle
programme was lauded by working-class respondents because of its potential to
improve
other
working-class people, its 'lifestyle' ethos courted criticism. The
trappings of lifestyle which find their expression in the garden makeover and the
personality-interpreter were largely rejected as superficial and expensive products
of popular entertainment. For the people of this study lifestyle, regardless of their
locations of class and gender, remains a media construction rather than a lived
experience. This does not mean that they were entirely untouched by lifestyle ideas,
indeed in some cases, people made innovative interpretations of the ideas they
encountered. However in these exceptional cases where imaginations were captured
by fresh lifestyle ideas, people tended to allow their interpretations to remain at
dream or fantasy level (Campbell 1995). Gratifying their dreams through actual
consumption held small priority for these ordinary gardeners.
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