Well it's been a tough emotional romp of a week. I have had sleepless nights and swings of mood as the reality of University scared the shit of of me . Today introduction to the MacLab (Computer room) gave me some indication that some 250 fellow psychology students don't know everything there is to know about writing an essay! and that coupled with some loving and pragmatic support from Chris, thoughtful and measured support from Nige, Fluffy and funny support from Kim and a pithy text from John H all have helped me over that initial PANIC!!...and I am very grateful for that.
traveling on the coastal train always feels like some psychology experiment in itself. Apart from the regular commuters you find on any train network, I think the Welsh train is unique as large numbers of the Great Unwashed. Jobless, uniformed (see pic) young men with noticeable "shortness of bone", roam the network like black ghetto characters inhabiting brownstone house steps in New York crime films. This "underclass" I find threatening ,irritating and confusing . Is it just me?
I was intrigued by your blog entry about The Great Unwashed, and thought about this some more. It’s a little dated now, I guess, but Michel Maffesoli’s thesis, The Time of the Tribes (1988), on ‘neo-tribalism’ perhaps provides an explanatory model to explain these folk that you describe.
ReplyDeleteHis argument trades the class system of modernity with the fragmented and transitory ‘tribal’ relationships of the post-modern world. Maffesoli argues that the transition from the political and social structures of modernity have the potential to invoke a multiplicity of ‘neo-tribal’ groupings in society, albeit groupings that lack many of the features traditionally associated with the notion of a ‘tribe’.
In respect of your observations, therefore, there is little separating ‘your’ people with many other new or ‘neo-tribes’ that have emerged in the last twenty years or so, other than this particular group is somewhat more visible. Rather than aligning themselves with ethnic or religious values and beliefs, or a specific geographical situation, this particular neo-tribal group are harmonised with the affectations and rituals of their time, namely consumption, material possessions, media cultures.
For me, one of the great ironies is that of John Major and his pronouncement of a ‘classless society’ in 1990. Whilst I’m sure that Mr Major wasn’t thinking about The Time of the Tribes at the time, his notion was strangely prescient. Yes, I believe that we have become a classless society, albeit not through political endeavour as Mr Major anticipated, but through the dissolving of the very notion of class with which previous generations (in modernity) have organised themselves. Your ‘Great unwashed’ are simply a consequence/production of post-modernity, and the class system a historical convenience with little real meaning.
Discuss.
exactly what I was thinking Nige!!!
ReplyDeleteyeah right.............lol