Agriculture Reference
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false and sentimental. But these feminist critics also argue for the re-appraisal of the
sentimental. Gorton's work on emotional television uses Kay Mellor's tv writing as
an example of how the 'emotional journey' of comedy drama weaves intellectual
and emotional engagement together to make 'good' television. Such programmes,
she argues, require formal aesthetic qualities in order to 'move' their audiences. Such
devices are part of the pedagogical politics of connecting audiences to societal issues
and to a 'sense that relationships, whether in the family, community, workplace,
matter and that they will enable us to cope with everyday struggles and pressures
of life' (2005,78). The idea that sentimental texts connect viewers and readers to
the good things in life is echoed in Warhol's writing: 'To those who ask, “what's
'good' about 'the good cry'?” I respond that the ideals of sentimental culture - the
affirmation of community, the persistence of hopefulness and of willingness, the
belief that everyone matters, the sense that life has a purpose that can be traced to the
link of affection between and among persons - are good ideals' (Warhol 2003, 56).
The dual-edged properties of the 'sentimental' enable an understanding of why
this type of capital is not valued outside its community of users: it is condemned
in the wider culture for the reasons Knight outlines, while also carrying a host of
valuable good life ideals for the community in which it circulates.
Sentimental Capital
Sentimental capital is an emotional resource, which is produced out of affective
familial ties and becomes fastened to a repertoire of shared ideas about the skills,
knowledge and assets that might be drawn upon to aesthetically make gardens.
Interestingly, while sentimental capital was in abundance among the middle-aged, it
was held in equal measure by both the men and women of the study. In the context
of this study it was not so much transmitted or used up, rather, in line with the
sentimental feelings that were being experienced it was continually re-visited and
re-experienced. 'Sentimentalism,' as Warhol argues, 'is pointedly not cathartic …
it rather encourages readers to rehearse and reinforce the feelings it evokes' (2003,
18). When it is was drawn upon amongst the working-class gardeners of my study,
it was shared and circulated through practices of sharing plants and seeds and by
adhering to communally sanctioned practices about garden aesthetics. It was used
in relation to the acquisition of traditional skills, such as caring properly for tools or
growing vegetables. And sentimental capital had a temporal dimension - part of its
wistful nostalgia came out of conceiving the act of gardening as an old practice. The
passing down and then passing on of plants and practices were part of the emotional
investment in gardens. Moreover, the working-class respondents were attuned to
owning their sentimental feelings through what seemed to me to be an oral tradition
of narrating stories about gardening practices. I am by no means the first to note
the how sentimentality operates specifically within British working-class culture.
In Lusted's (1998) discussion of the affective appeal of light entertainment for
audiences, he makes a particular case for sentimentality and the working-class:
It is the display of emotion which characterises working-class social interaction. Working-
class cultures celebrate sentiment and the display of sentiment (sentimentality?). It is part
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