I was interested to read your comments about the romanticisation and
re-appropriation of the 1960s, 70s and 80s. I'm currently co-ordinating an
ESRC project looking, in part, at 'retro' consumption spaces and
practices. The project involves ethnographic and interview work with a
range of consumers who were involved in many of these 'counter-cultural'
scenes, those who currently shop in second hand spaces and those who
create, recreate and re-appropriate the retro scene in a range of British
cities (these include music promoters, DJs, bar & club managers and
workers, designers, fashion students, retailers and so on).
What our work is revealing is how complex the recreation and
reappropriation of earlier decades really is: it's not just about
nostalgia, romanticisation and (as you suggest) a trivialisation and
mis-interpretation of certain historical moments. Rather, it seems that
such spaces and practices of consumption are the result of the complex
interplay between a range of factors including (as you point out) key
icons, popular narratives about `swinging London' and so on (see Simon
Rycroft's piece on this in JHG), but also about issues of quality, cost,
body image, certain kinds of knowledges and the interplay between
different conceptions of cultural and economic capital. It is also bound
up with fashion and style history and with certain regimes of cultural
production and consumption. To say that memories of the 60s are
entirely commercial re-appropriations or that all 70s fashion was rubbish
or that all 80s music was crap is, I think, something of a simplistic
generalisation which fails to acknowledge the complex people, places and
practices involved in the creation and recreation of these spaces.
Louise Crewe
************************************
Dr. Louise Crewe
Senior Lecturer
Department of Geography
University of Nottingham
Nottingham NG7 2RD
Email: [log in to unmask]
Tel 0115 9515 441
************************************
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|