Delyth Edwards

Counting the pennies: the cultural economy of charity shopping

ABSTRACT The Understanding Everyday Participation – Articulating Cultural Values (UEP) project is grounded in the belief that the current system for the support of culture promotes and privileges certain practices and activities, tastes, relationships and competences and that, crucially, this system has effects that extend outside of the cultural domain to the economic, political and social spheres. In order to challenge this dominance, UEP sets out to explore the meanings and values people attach to their “everyday participation”, with the aim of re-evaluating current understandings of cultural participation and cultural value [Miles, A., & Gibson, L. (2016). Understanding everyday participation-articulating cultural values. Cultural Trends, 25(3), 151–157]. This article discusses UEP ethnographic research conducted within a charity shop in Manchester/ Salford. The charity shop is found to be a site fundamentally involved in the “cultural economy”, defined broadly to refer to the relations between the cultural and economic values of particular practices and institutions involved in cultural production and consumption. Existing research on consumption have understood the charity shop as a place of cultural consumption, for certain subcultures that make “clever” choices regarding their identities [Gregson, N., & Crewe, L. (2003). Second hand cultures. Oxford: Berg]. This article argues for an understanding of the charity shop as more than simply a place of consumption but as enmeshed within a set of relations between culture, economy and place which has effects in the social sphere. This research identifies a number of forms of participation, including consumption, but also extending to various production practices, and other forms of social interaction, which take place within and through the charity shop. We argue that these different types of participation are bound up in a positioning cultural system that categorises people, places and values within and beyond the sphere of the charity shop.

The Space Between

This chapter returns to a methodological concern and explores how identity is constructed in the present. The aim of this chapter is to critically explore the space of the interview, what the author refers to as the space between. The author presents the different narrative layers the participants used to construct their selves and identities. These include dramatis personae, interactive manoeuvres, small story as genre and questions of identity in the social context. ‘The space between’ draws attention to the different contexts of remembering carried out during life story work, the autobiographical and collective and explores how these two memory processes feed into each other.

Remembering that Feeling of Not Being at Home (in the World)

This chapter focuses on the memories of the journey from Nazareth House, of leaving care. Edwards argues that with this transition, home became something experienced and remembered as metaphysical, a feeling. The memories can be categorised in four types; memories of transition, memories from the first couple of months, memories of return and memories of resilience. ‘Remembering that feeling of Not Being at Home (in the world)’ offers an alternative way of approaching and writing about the process of leaving care. The author argues that being at home for those with care experience is a process, a ‘reflexive project’ and a memory.

The Abused Orphan: Memory as Legitimate and National Heritage

This chapter explores the dominant memory of orphanhood: the abused orphan. Edwards outlines the three socio-cultural contexts in which this memory and identity has been constructed. The first is the historical narratives of the orphan in real life and those presented as the truth in fiction, in literature for example. The second is the orphan of the ‘abuse inquiry narrative’ and what this had led to in terms of a creating a ‘memory habit’ (Plummer 2001). The final context is the museum and the role it has constructing the orphan from the identities given in the historical and inquiry narratives. ‘The Abused Orphan: Memory as legitimate and national heritage’ concludes by questioning the ambivalence of identity practices, suggesting that identity, is both a social and individual process.

Absent Memories: An Autobiographical and Methodological Dilemma

This chapter explores the concept of ‘absent memory’, from the wider perspective of social forgetting. However, the primary concern here is with the micro understanding of absence existing within the participant’s everyday lives and how they deal with such absences in their identity work. Using several examples, the author demonstrates how absence exists as an autobiographical default for those with care experience. The chapter continues to explore how this same absence can be a methodological concern for memory researchers. ‘Absent Memories: An Autobiographical and methodological dilemma?’ concludes with an argument for a better understanding of how people with care experience cope with and build experience around the gaps in their lives.

A Methodology of Remembering: The Self Who Was, the Self Who Is and the Self Who Narrates

This chapter achieves two objectives. The first is to introduce the reader to the research. The theory behind the biographical method is summarised, describing what is expected when conducting a biographical interview; moving on to consider what actually happened during the interviews conducted for this book. The second objective considers some of the big issues Edwards faced in working with the autobiographical interview. The chapter draws attention to the difficulty there is in interpreting, analysing and presenting memory. ‘A Methodology of Remembering: The self who was, the self who is and the self who narrates’ concludes with a critique and detailed approach to how memories as told could be interpreted and analysed.

Introduction: Starting from a Place of Familial Memory

The aim of this chapter is to introduce the reader to a children’s Home called Nazareth House, which is integral to the authors own familial memories. Edwards suggests that institutions such as Nazareth House, which have a long social history are remembered in three ways. Firstly, it is remembered as an institution emplaced within a wider system and set of practices occurring at a particular moment in history. Secondly, it is remembered as a building which existed physically in time and space. Thirdly, social theory is applied to the memory process. ‘Starting from a place of familial memory’ concludes with the author questioning the more humanistic ways Nazareth House is remembered.

Remembering a Home of Origin: Creating Places Through Memory

It is apparent that remembering Orphanhood revolves largely around two spaces: Nazareth House and the transition of leaving care. This chapter explores the memories of experiences of growing up in Nazareth House; ranging from the general to the more self-specific memories. The memories can be split into roughly five genres; memories of the house, memories which have significantly impacted upon the self, memories of the everyday, humorous memories, memories of negotiating and memories of feeling at home. Using Giddens (1991) ‘reflexive project of the self’ ‘Remembering a Home of Origin: Creating Places through memory’ concludes with the argument that identity, for the Girls of Nazareth House, is located in memories of space and of home.

Conclusion: Managing Memory in the Care System Today

In chapter eight a critical gaze is brought to bear on today’s care system and how the memory of children living in and leaving care is managed. This is done by firstly outlining what we have learnt from the past, from the participants of my research, moving on to introduce the context of the care system today. For example, the idea of life story work is explored. ‘Managing memory in the care system today’ calls for an understanding of how memory is managed by social services and offers new understandings of memory that social policy may want to consider. The concluding argument presented in this chapter is that those with care experience live their lives, construct their memories and form their identities from the autobiographical, cultural and absent memories present in their everyday lives.

Performing Moretonhampstead: rurality, participation and cultural value

ABSTRACT This paper is based on a multi-sited ethnography of subjects engaged in performance-based participation – amateur theatre, community-based theatre and Carnival – in the market town of Moretonhampstead on Dartmoor in the South West of England. Given its setting, the case study examines the rural dimensions of participation and cultural value. In addition to understanding the meaning and value of performance-based participation taking place in shared communal spaces, including the parish hall and the high street, this article seeks to understand everyday participation as a fundamentally embodied and emplaced practice. Place is not simply a venue or site for performance (or any other type of) participation. Drawing on the place theory of Edward Casey, who follows the European school of phenomenology, it is argued that place is, rather, the fundamental ground of human experience: embodied subjects and places co-evolve in a dialogic process of inter-animation. The main question we ask is how rurality shapes participation and how participation re-produces material and imaginary rural spaces. A key characteristic of government funding of arts and culture in the UK is extreme inequality in the distribution of funds to the City of London compared to the rest of the UK. While the cultural ecosystems of all UK regions outside London are equally disadvantaged in this respect, economic and cultural development in the South West region exacerbates this unequal situation by focussing investment and service provision in urban hubs, leaving contrasting rural areas doubly disadvantaged. This case study argues that an idyll-ised rural imaginary re-produced in and through everyday participation is only compounded by government deficits. Furthermore, it asserts that cultural policy making concerned with the value of equality must adopt a co-ordinated approach that takes into account complex interdependencies of national, regional and local registers of place.