Gardening Taste: Theoretical Concepts and Framework - A Taste for Gardening: Classed and Gendered Practices - page 53

performed gendered subjectivity. Will it be the case, for example, that the men and
women of my study simply take up the traditionally gendered images offered to them
by the national and local media? And, since gender is always classed, might class
inflect how men and women chose to become particular kinds of gendered gardening
subjects? On the other hand, if as Butler argues, performatives can seize their own
authority without being tied to institutional sanctions, it may be that the institutional
role of the media - with its conventionally gendered images - is negligible. It
might be that the men and women of my study choose not to perform gender in
conventional ways. It may be that female gardeners might 'make like men', or that
men might develop a feminine 'feel for the game' and develop feminine gardening
skills. If this is so, what social circumstances in ordinary everyday contexts, produce
the choice to do gendered gardening differently or subversively? And if men and
women are acting to unhinge traditional modes of gender, in what ways do such
'insurrectionary acts' shake the foundations of institutions such as the media? Might
ordinary insurrectionary acts set the agenda for more politically empowering images
of how men and women are represented in the lifestyle gardening media? These
questions are taken up in relation to my empirical findings in chapter 7.
Conclusion
This chapter argues that Pierre Bourdieu's cultural approach to class offers the
most productive collection of theories and concepts for understanding gardening
consumption and taste practices. Turning to a review of recent literature on class,
lifestyle, difference and identity, I argue that recent claims about class in social theory
carry a degree of pertinence. Ultimately however, recent empirical and ethnographic
studies lead me to conclude that class is both structurally and culturally salient. I use
these studies to map a further set of questions regarding class and the topic thereby
refining its main questions. Focusing on gender, I argue that recent post-modern
theory (Butler 1990), offers the most politically empowering way of theorising
gendered acts of gardening. However, I argue that out of the critical dialogue between
Bourdieu and Butler, Bourdieu productively tempers Butler's ideas that identity can
be re-cast at the subject's will.
Chapter 4 asks if the ordinary garden has a history or place in academic
literature. Reviewing a range of inter-disciplinary sources, with class and gender
at the forefront of the analysis, I ask how far the people, history, sites and spaces
of ordinary gardening are accounted for. Can this literature, I ask, map an adequate
geographical and historical context for my ethnographic findings on the classed and
gendered dynamics of gardening?