Capítulo 2. Marco Teórico
2.2 Proceso de certificación de productos
This contributes to the confused nexus between deviance and leisure and thus, parkour’s equally confused and inconsistent governance in urban space as security guards acknowledge its cultural conformity and low levels of comparable harm.
From Fordism to Post-Fordism
“Now that leisure no longer fulfils the mere function of periodic refreshment but has become a crucial profit-making cog in consumer capitalism’s machine, we must consider the possibility that it actually offers little more potential freedom and creativity—possibly even less—than it did in capitalism’s industrial heyday” (Winlow and Hall, 2006: 75)
This section aims to examine the epochal shift from Fordism to Post-Fordism that occurred across the Western world from the 1980s onwards (Amin, 1994). It is vital to understand the magnitude of economic change that occurred in this period which some have argued are of similar consequence to the agricultural and industrial revolutions (Hobsbawm, 1996; Smith, 2014). These changes in global capitalism precipitated a move away from the stability, comprehensibility and structure of modernity, and toward a more pervasive and perpetual sense of liquidity (Bauman, 2000). Such reconfigurations in the labour market and the associated structures of class, family, and community altered the attitude and narrative towards these ‘older’ forms of collective identity. In doing so, they also reconfigured the balance and cultural importance placed upon work and leisure (Winlow and Hall, 2006). While this may be uncomfortable for a liberal-left who tenaciously forget history in favour of an autonomous subject who freely utilises leisure to mould and remould their identities unburdened by capitalism’s grasp, it remains important to understand the ramifications and connections between these structural changes in global capitalism, culture and their influence upon the primacy of leisure.
Fordism
With regards to the organisation of social structure, cultural meanings and values, the period of Fordism or ‘industrial modernity’ could perhaps be best summarised as a period of relative stability (Bauman, 1992). Driven by the dynamic of mass production,
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mass employment and the reliance upon a relatively specific division of labour, life under industrial capitalism in the UK was characterised by a relatively rigid class structure and stratification of society. Bauman described this period as the ubiquitous world of “universality, homogeneity, monotony, and clarity’ (Bauman, 1992: 188). The existence of industries that were based on seemingly permanent and immovable physical work sites such as shipyards, dockyards, coal mines and factories also resulted in the emergence of ‘single-industry communities’ which can be seen in the association of entire cities or regions with certain industries of manufacturing, mining and shipping among others (Byne, 1989; Dennis et al, 1969; Robinson, 2002; Winlow, 2001). These industries often came with surrounding class-based communities18 which emerged in
relation to the local industry, and would thus internally reproduce themselves and forms of class-based habitus, cultural meanings and values in line with the demands industrial capitalism (Cohen and Robins, 1978; Williams, 1961; Willis, 1977; 1979).
Within this stratified and relatively rigid set of class structures, people possessed relatively clear, achievable, and comprehensible life-biographies. As Willis (1977) and Corrigan (1979) have observed, members of these working class communities lived in the same neighbourhoods (Parker, 1974), attended the same schools, entered into the same workplaces and industries and transitioned into adulthood relatively unencumbered. In the Fordist era, there were clear demarcations between youth and adulthood, with readily identifiable symbols and markers of youth, adolescence, and adulthood to help the individual situate oneself in each life stage. For men and women, there were clearly delineated and unambiguous gender roles which structured one’s life-goals, values and personal characteristics (Corrigan, 1979; Roberts, 1993; Walby, 1986), all of which emerged from the needs of capital during industrial modernity. For men, a ‘muscular christianity’ valorised hard labour and physically-hardened men as breadwinners for the family. Sons would tend to follow fathers and grandfathers into the local industry or ‘trade’ (Willis, 1977), while women fulfilled the traditional roles of domesticity (Goldthorpe, 1980). Undoubtedly, this period was characterised by injustice, inequality and social tensions (Feree and Hall, 1996). It is for these reasons that it is
18 As we will see in chapter 8, the diminishing presence of these industries also resulted in capital and
people moving back to central urban spaces rather than suburban neighbourhoods as local economies became organised around leisure, tourism, consumption and real estate.
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often depicted negatively as a time of deep oppression and closed-mindedness19 by the
liberal left who are in favour of an autonomous individualism that feeds into contemporary consumer capitalism. However, as Winlow and Hall (2006) have pointed out, none of this precluded the existence of individual divergences or unique traits that differentiated people from one another. It simply acknowledges that while alternative forms of masculinity and femininity were present (Beynon, 2002), there was also level of certainty, confidence and safety derived from the stability of employment and the fluency in localised meanings and values which held a clear sense of cultural capital and how it could be accrued. This is unlike the youth transitions today which are fraught with a general sense of incomprehensibility and systemically imposed interruptions, stoppages and reversals on the transitions to adulthood (Hayward, 2012b; Smith, 2014). It is no surprise that the extraordinary rises in mental health issues have accompanied the dawn of neoliberalism (James, 2010), with many writers exploring these issues of objectless anxiety (Hall, 2012a), ontological insecurity (Young, 2007), and infantilisation (Hayward, 2012b; Smith, 2014). As we shall see in chapter 6, this is certainly the case for the traceurs in this study, who equated the ‘achievement’ of adulthood with death in which anything ‘beyond’ the individualism and immediate gratification of youth was somehow less than life. Equally, these young people anticipated failure as an expected and routine aspect of this transition20.
Throughout capitalist history leisure has been shaped significantly by the needs and structure of political economy, and the Fordist era was no exception. Gendered forms of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ leisure supported and bolstered the social institutions of family and community, in addition to reproducing the forms of masculine habitus which cultivated the solidarity and communality necessary for men to endure the often debilitating, monotonous, and physically demanding routines of everyday labour
19 This is evident in popular culture through films such as Pride (2014).
20 It should be noted that my own participants held no sense of class identity that carried any
substance. This is significant in the regional context of Newcastle and the North East, where class relations structured life significantly. In a society of widening socio-economic inequality and social exclusion, it would be reckless to claim the ‘death of class’ (Pakulski and Waters, 1995). However, it is less controversial to claim a death or decline of class identity. When asked about his class identity, Sonic responded: “I don’t know really. I guess I’m working class. But for me, working class is like my Granddad. He used to work down the mines and that and lived in the same little village his whole life. We’ve moved around a bit more, Mam got a decent job and we moved to a nice little suburb [on the outskirts of the city centre]. We don’t know anyone there or anything. So I guess my family’s working class but I dunno if I am. Doesn’t matter these days though.”
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(Charlseworth, 2000; Clark and Critcher, 1985; Willis, 1977; 1979). Men would drink excessively with colleagues as a reprieve from work, a ‘time out of time’ in which the hard realities, frustrations and challenges of everyday life could be put onto the backburner. As Winlow and Hall (2006) have written reflecting on the ‘ghostly landscapes’ of industrialism’s former epicentres: “the ribald voices of men in bars echo in the memory just as loudly as the jackhammer or the goods train” (Winlow and Hall, 2006: 75). However, they also warn that one should not confuse these redeeming qualities of masculine Fordist leisure with the autonomous and creative ability of these exploited groups to ‘resist’ through leisure. As they point out, one must acknowledge the way in which these forms of masculine leisure actively aided the on-going reproduction of the Fordist social structure and, subsequently, the evolution of new modes of capitalism.
Therefore, the act of consumption and the attachment of social significance to particular commodities and leisure pastimes are not distinct to late-capitalism, but has been an ever-present feature of society (McKendrick et al, 1983). What is of concern with regards to leisure and conspicuous consumption in the contemporary context is not consumption and leisure itself, but of consumerism as a set of cultural practices. It is a concern with the prominence of consumerism in the lives of individuals. Objects and commodities have the capacity to carry such powerful and illustrious meanings that they act as referees in social relationships, and have the power to engender a fragile sense of self-esteem and make people feel inadequate, unsuccessful or culturally bankrupt of value (Winlow, 2015). What differentiates the consumption of post-war Fordism from today’s advanced consumerism is that the seductive allure of these commodities, leisure and lifestyles did not constitute the primary basis of one’s identity or social value. In this period, a secure sense of self was derived from more formal, durable, and collective forms of identity through work21, family, community and class
identity. To return to the dualistic tension between the ‘centripetal’ forces of normative order and the ‘centrifugal’ forces of individual distinction through leisure and consumption (Hall et al, 2008); this was a period of industrial capitalism which
21 While there are some individuals who derive their identity primarily through their occupation, as
Stebbins (1995) has observed, this is a luxury in late-modern times. As we shall see in chapter 6, the vast majority of work in late-capitalism is precarious, devoid of fulfilment and characterised by a sense that the worker is dispensable in a society which has resolved ‘the labour question’ (Byrne, 1989), precluding forms of class and occupational solidarity.
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benefited from the valorisation of homogenised class-based cultural traits and collective identities of ‘providing for the family’ and ‘getting a trade’ (Roberts, 1993), and the willingness of the individual labourer to be satisfied with an element of indistinction and homogeneity. This is in stark contrast to the contemporary context which mirrors neoliberalism’s fundamental ethic of intense individualism.
Neoliberalism
For the purposes of this thesis it is unnecessary to go into the excruciating social and economic details behind the ‘stagflation’ of Keynesian economics—this has been comprehensively explained elsewhere (Harvey, 2007). It suffices to say that in Western society, various socio-economic crises opened up the avenue for discussions around the need for wholesale, ideologically-based economic reforms. Namely, this was the neoliberalism of the Thatcher and Reagan era (Keen, 2011; Klein, 2008) which has since come to dominate political-economic thought to the extent that there is little scope for thinking beyond the horizon of neoliberal capitalism (Fisher, 2009). The demise of industrial modernity and the social democratic state crumbled in the 1970s and 1980s, most poignantly visible in the closure of British coalmines after the 1984-1985 Miners Strike. This was experienced not just as a loss of employment and industry, but the death of an entire way of life. As Harvey (1989; 2007) and others have observed, the triumph of neoliberalism irrevocably altered the nature and organisation of all the social and cultural institutions that make up the individual’s private orbits, penetrating the attitudes and orientation of subjectivity, and how one structured their life, family, goals, values and identity.
The emergence of neoliberalism in the UK was effectively a complete reversal of the social and political structures of the social democratic Keynesian state. Neoliberalism is characterised by the ideological belief that social well-being is best achieved by liberating individual entrepreneurialism by scaling back the welfare state and throwing the economy and sectors of the public services into a deregulated free-market22. This is
22 It should be noted that the traditional vision of the ‘weak’ neoliberal state is far from accurate in our
current political-economic juncture. On the contrary, in the wake of numerous financial crises free- market capitalism required a strong state to bail out banks and impose the financial and economic policies to keep late-capitalism alive.
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the view that by introducing increased competitiveness into society breeds positive personal responsibility and initiative (Harvey, 2007). The political-economic policies of Thatcher and Reagan emerged during a perfect storm of shifting factors: the rise of a technology boom received heavy investment which saw the application of information technologies to the manufacturing and service industries. This resulted in the subsequent decline of manufacturing industries and the reorganisation of the labour force. Such changes displaced routine manual and managerial jobs (and the skills and cultural capital that accompanied them), whilst requiring a re-skilling of the labour force and a higher level of skill by even lower-level workers (Castells, 2000). The increase in globalisation and new global markets compounded these effects, outsourcing traditional industries around which entire regions and communities had structured their lives.
In the UK, this prompted the ‘flexibilisation’ of labour (Amin, 1994; Young, 2007). Broadly speaking, this entailed the rise of short-term or zero-hour contracts, the expectation to move between jobs and industries, and also the concentration of work in particular regions of the UK. One effect of this was for people to move away from familiar close-knit locales and even entire regions in the search for work or careers. This made it more difficult to establish the more stable and enduring social institutions of family, community and collective class identity that defined much of British life under modernity. Moreover, with a slight increase in social mobility, neoliberalism nurtured a middle class spirit through the seductive allure of mass consumerism and growing ‘embourgoisement’ in the post-war years (Galbraith, 1999; Goldthorpe 1980). As Harvey (2007: 61) notes:
“Thatcher forged consent through the cultivation of a middle class that relished the joys of home ownership, private property, individualism and the liberation of entrepreneurial opportunities. With working class solidarity waning under pressure and job structures radically changing through deindustrialisation, middle class values spread more widely to encompass many of those who had once had a firm working class identity.”
Cut adrift from the traditional anchors of identities, and subject to a growing neoliberal individualism which was combined with an intensifying democratisation of
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consumption, we can see how these political-economic shifts made way for an identifiable neoliberal subjectivity which identified heavily with the individualism and identity work of leisure and consumerism. This is encapsulated most poignantly in Margaret Thatcher’s famous refrain that there was ‘no such thing as society, only individual men and women’ (Keen, 2011). As Western capitalism’s real economy became increasingly predicated around consumption, the leisure and consumer industries moved into the void left by these obsolete structures of modernity as the primary bases around which the subject could construct a coherent sense of self. Postmodernist scepticism abounded towards old forms of collectivism, which were viewed as archaic and oppressive to the pluralistic worlds of identity (Winlow and Hall, 2012).
Indeed, one can see how Frederic Jameson’s famous refrain that postmodernism constitutes the cultural logic of late-capitalism is undeniably correct. More stable and enduring identities were a burden upon the subject’s unique individuality and the myriad of exciting opportunities offered by leisure markets and consumer culture that appeared to give the subject an autonomous freedom to construct and reconstruct their identities as they wished (Jayne, 2006; Miles, 2015; Riley et al, 2013). Life became a creative project in which there was a new cultural command to know oneself, enjoy oneself and construct a free and unique identity rooted in individualism by staying detached from the oppressive and homogenising social structures of modernity. As society fragmented, with the emphasis being upon differentiation rather than commonality, the underlying energies of leisure and consumerism outlined earlier were harnessed by the neoliberal ethic of individualism. Leisure and consumption became key arenas in which the individual can distinguish themselves from ‘the herd’.
Furthermore, Žižek (2002a) argues that this precipitated a significant shift or ‘reorientation’ of the cultural superego. Drawing upon Freudian psychoanalysis, previous symbolic orders were characterised by a strong cultural superego that counter-balanced the libidinal and thymotic desires of the id. Individuals were more likely to feel guilt or shame for over-indulgence. In the contemporary context of individualism, immediate gratification and the ‘culture of now’ (Hayward, 2007), individuals are more likely to feel guilt or shame for failing to indulge their desires (see
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Raymen and Smith, 2016 for examples). Thus, the emphasis upon individualistic indulgence and identity enabled the subject to satiate their deepest desires in the absence of modernity’s repressive rules and symbolic order. The late-capitalist neoliberal subject could perhaps aptly be described as a ‘neophiliac’ (Campbell, 1987), or what Bauman (1997) describes as a ‘sensation gatherer’—that which is constantly in search of the ‘new’. In the following section, we will explore how this relates to the rise in popularity of parkour and how it affects our understandings of parkour as ‘deviant’ which builds into the following chapter. In addition, we will consider how the importance and primacy of leisure in a neophiliac late-capitalism has destabilised collective social definitions of ‘deviance’; and its significance for understandings of parkour, its status as ‘deviant’, and its control in public space in later chapters.