International Workshop: Rethinking Affluence: Socio-cultural change in Britain, c 1950-2000
20-21 September 2006
Venue: The Chancellors (Fallowfield), University of Manchester
Confirmed Plenary and Keynote Speakers
Prof Zygmunt Bauman , University of Leeds
Prof Victoria de Grazia , Columbia University
Prof Paul du Gay , Open University
Prof Matthew Hilton , University of Birmingham
Prof Frank Mort , University of Manchester
Prof Avner Offer , All Souls College, University of Oxford
Prof Mike Savage , University of Manchester
Prof Frank Trentmann , Birkbeck College, University of London
Workshop Outline
Southam Street, London W10, 1956-1961
by © Roger Mayne
British society has seen a sustained rise in GDP over the last half century, to the extent that affluence and consumerism has come to be seen as one of its core features. Our understanding of this process has changed over recent decades: from initial claims that Britain was an 'affluent society' from the later 1950s, through to claims about the rise of consumer culture and financial booms from the 1980s. This workshop emerges from the recognition that our understanding of affluence is currently limited by a distinctive disciplinary stand off. Sociologists have placed great emphasis on the transformations associated with neo-liberalism from the 1980s, and have drawn attention to epochal shifts in popular cultural values but they have not examined the precursors of consumerism in the immediate post war period. There is an increasing range of research by social and cultural historians on changes over the post-war period but these have not cross-fertilised with sociological debates. The aim of this workshop is therefore to bring together leading researchers from different disciplinary backgrounds to consider the course of economic, social and cultural change in Britain over the entire period between 1945 and 2005.
Due attention will be given to an exploration of new methods and data sources that can be used to study long term change in Britain, drawing on initiatives begun by the Centre for Research on Socio-cultural Change (CRESC). These will include the use of survey sources form the 1950s and 1960s, the re-use of qualitative data, collected by social science researchers and those collected in ESDS, Qualidata, and life histories.
The broader aim will therefore be to support the interdisciplinary study of post war British society in a way that seeks to overcome the current lack of dialogue between history and the social sciences. We are also keen to bring in comparative perspectives in order to enrich our understanding of the British case. The workshop will take the form of invited key note sessions and a series of parallel sessions with papers addressing the following themes:
- The Affluent Society revisited. In retrospect, what changes took place between 1945 and the early 1960s, and how far can we detect distinctive patterns in the transformation and organisation of consumption and cultural values which have had an enduring effect?
- Americanization/globalisation. Social historian Victoria de Grazia argues that the American standard of living defeated the European way of life and achieved the global cultural hegemony that is both its great strength and its key weakness today. She raises provocative questions about the quality of life, democracy, and peace that arise from the much vaunted diffusion of mass consumer culture. We ask whether and how these issues can be detected in a British context.
- Consumer culture, work cultures and the decline of class. Contemporary sociologists, such as Zygmunt Bauman, argue that the rise of consumer cultures erodes work identities and is also associated with the eclipse of class identities. How can we understand the relationship between these issues in long term historical perspective?
- Status competition and well-being. Heterodox economic historians, such as Avner Offer, argue that linear scales of status or prestige, once accepted by social science, have lost universal claims in the advance of post-war consumer society with the flow of novelty. To what extent does status competition and consumerism entail the remaking of interpersonal relations between income groups, between men and women, and between age groups?
Please send your enquiries to:
Shinobu Majima: shinobu.majima@manchester.ac.uk or
Mike Savage: mike.savage@manchester.ac.uk