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sabrinamariRight now I'm reading "Working-Class Heroes: Protecting Home, Community, and Nation in a Chicago Neighborhood," by Maria Kefalas.
I've never understood the worldview of ethnic White communities like the one she describes, nor the way in which people's houses serve as expressions of their core identities. For me, a home is a refuge, a place of renewal---a place to snuggle, laugh and feel good. But I've never really thought about a house as a powerful expression of my values or my identity, and certainly not as an expression of my character in the world. OK, my mom lost her mind if people came over and the place wasn't spotless, but I am trying not to live that way...trying, anyway...
But as a mixed-race kid from a middle-class, academic family, I've never really understood the values that drive the creation of an absolutely immaculate lawn. I've always understood that neatness was important, and I also understand the importance of a beautiful and harmonious environment in maintaining a peaceful, happy life. For me, the beauty of the environment within and without is all about promoting sweetness, delight and peace. Home is a place to feel fulfilled and cared for.
But there is so much in this book that I've never understood about the ways in which homes reflect class-related values, or the ways in which houses are used to evaluate people's characters...it just seems so strange to me.
When I see an untidy house, I feel empathy and think about my own home and its frequent untidiness, which does vex me. I really have to stay on it to keep it tidy. Usually, I think, "It's so hard to work and write and teach (many of my friends are academics) and how do people do it?" Especially, I don't understand how people with children do it. I am completely amazed at anyone who can work, run a household and raise children full-time. That seems like a Herculean task to me.
Still, in this book, the perspectives that allow people to judge each other by the immaculate state of their houses or the absolute perfection of their lawns is made clear.
I get it.
I don't feel comfortable with it, but I finally get it.
We'll discuss this in class tonight, and it will really add to our exploration of modern urban life and inner city settings. The community in this book is filled with people who've moved out of inner city, urban neighborhoods that have now become part of the ghetto. The folks who live there live in fear that their neighborhoods will eventually succumb to the devastation that opened up behind them, and any sign of an untidy lawn or a less-than-immaculate house is seen as a harbinger of devastation to come. It also labels the people who live there as the same kind of people who "created" the ghetto (yes, this is a worldview that does not understand or account for structural violence, racism and the effects of endemic poverty). But through the eyes of Maria Kefalas, I now understand why this makes sense to the folks who hold this worldview.
Although it's hard for me to read a new book every week in preparation for this class, I am learning so much...I'll be glad when I don't have to do it at this pace, but my eyes are being opened to many worldviews that I've never understood before.
"Beltwayites' social location influences the cultural materials they use to make sense of the world. Their working-class status gives them a unique vantage point from which to look out on the rest of the world. This social position creates boundaries and parameters in which to act. In this sense, the culture of the last garden can be understood as a distinctively working-class phenomenon. The residents of Beltway use the visual landscape-in this case household display-to form and be transformed by the last garden. Given the power of the notion of Beltway as "the last stand" and the accurate (although racist) conviction that Beltway represents a way of life in danger of extinction, devout believers in place self-consciously manage the appearance of their homes to ward off the forces of decay and disorder.
When people falter in their efforts to maintain the landscape-on the level of their homes-this is the first symptom that the promise of the last garden may be slipping away. Houseproud displays also magically strengthen Beltway's working-class inhabitants' tenuous grip on the American Dream. Neighbors anxiously guard Beltway by peering over fences and looking into windows to make mental notes about which neighbors are 'taking care of things.' Being clean establishes moral worth. Beltwayites cling so desperately to their ordered world because they cannot afford to take it for granted. For the middle and upper classes social ills and moral failings such as drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, teenage pregnancy, and poverty seem more distant, or at the very least are more carefully concealed. For the people of Beltway, the bungalows symbolize the attainment of a respectable life.
Middle-class families give higher priority to ambition and happiness because respectability and decency are not particularly problematic for them. Beltwayites' veneration of property brings to life how the ordinary, mundane items that surround us affect and reflect who we are. Garden dwellers use the bungalows and lawns to craft the lived space-their place-of their social world."
Maria Kefalas. Working-Class Heroes: Protecting Home, Community, and Nation in a Chicago Neighborhood (p. 119). Kindle Edition.
I've never understood the worldview of ethnic White communities like the one she describes, nor the way in which people's houses serve as expressions of their core identities. For me, a home is a refuge, a place of renewal---a place to snuggle, laugh and feel good. But I've never really thought about a house as a powerful expression of my values or my identity, and certainly not as an expression of my character in the world. OK, my mom lost her mind if people came over and the place wasn't spotless, but I am trying not to live that way...trying, anyway...
But as a mixed-race kid from a middle-class, academic family, I've never really understood the values that drive the creation of an absolutely immaculate lawn. I've always understood that neatness was important, and I also understand the importance of a beautiful and harmonious environment in maintaining a peaceful, happy life. For me, the beauty of the environment within and without is all about promoting sweetness, delight and peace. Home is a place to feel fulfilled and cared for.
But there is so much in this book that I've never understood about the ways in which homes reflect class-related values, or the ways in which houses are used to evaluate people's characters...it just seems so strange to me.
When I see an untidy house, I feel empathy and think about my own home and its frequent untidiness, which does vex me. I really have to stay on it to keep it tidy. Usually, I think, "It's so hard to work and write and teach (many of my friends are academics) and how do people do it?" Especially, I don't understand how people with children do it. I am completely amazed at anyone who can work, run a household and raise children full-time. That seems like a Herculean task to me.
Still, in this book, the perspectives that allow people to judge each other by the immaculate state of their houses or the absolute perfection of their lawns is made clear.
I get it.
I don't feel comfortable with it, but I finally get it.
We'll discuss this in class tonight, and it will really add to our exploration of modern urban life and inner city settings. The community in this book is filled with people who've moved out of inner city, urban neighborhoods that have now become part of the ghetto. The folks who live there live in fear that their neighborhoods will eventually succumb to the devastation that opened up behind them, and any sign of an untidy lawn or a less-than-immaculate house is seen as a harbinger of devastation to come. It also labels the people who live there as the same kind of people who "created" the ghetto (yes, this is a worldview that does not understand or account for structural violence, racism and the effects of endemic poverty). But through the eyes of Maria Kefalas, I now understand why this makes sense to the folks who hold this worldview.
Although it's hard for me to read a new book every week in preparation for this class, I am learning so much...I'll be glad when I don't have to do it at this pace, but my eyes are being opened to many worldviews that I've never understood before.
"Beltwayites' social location influences the cultural materials they use to make sense of the world. Their working-class status gives them a unique vantage point from which to look out on the rest of the world. This social position creates boundaries and parameters in which to act. In this sense, the culture of the last garden can be understood as a distinctively working-class phenomenon. The residents of Beltway use the visual landscape-in this case household display-to form and be transformed by the last garden. Given the power of the notion of Beltway as "the last stand" and the accurate (although racist) conviction that Beltway represents a way of life in danger of extinction, devout believers in place self-consciously manage the appearance of their homes to ward off the forces of decay and disorder.
When people falter in their efforts to maintain the landscape-on the level of their homes-this is the first symptom that the promise of the last garden may be slipping away. Houseproud displays also magically strengthen Beltway's working-class inhabitants' tenuous grip on the American Dream. Neighbors anxiously guard Beltway by peering over fences and looking into windows to make mental notes about which neighbors are 'taking care of things.' Being clean establishes moral worth. Beltwayites cling so desperately to their ordered world because they cannot afford to take it for granted. For the middle and upper classes social ills and moral failings such as drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, teenage pregnancy, and poverty seem more distant, or at the very least are more carefully concealed. For the people of Beltway, the bungalows symbolize the attainment of a respectable life.
Middle-class families give higher priority to ambition and happiness because respectability and decency are not particularly problematic for them. Beltwayites' veneration of property brings to life how the ordinary, mundane items that surround us affect and reflect who we are. Garden dwellers use the bungalows and lawns to craft the lived space-their place-of their social world."
Maria Kefalas. Working-Class Heroes: Protecting Home, Community, and Nation in a Chicago Neighborhood (p. 119). Kindle Edition.
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no subject
Date: 2012-03-28 03:20 pm (UTC)* I grew up in a town/community where the appearance of perfection was highly valued. (Not necessarily perfection itself, a nice little hypocrisy...)
* Where I ended up? With an overblown sense of needing to achieve the "appearance of perfection."
* I didn't get my commercialism, materialism, etc. from my own parents; I got from them an understanding of accepting paying more for quality, and being smart about money
* I don't really know where I got my materialism, and it both perplexes and vexes me.
In the book you've been reading, is it about the Washington, DC area? The Beltway (and attitudes of neighbors about their lawns) is a place I lived for 13 years, and it was definitely an interesting experience-- and both similar and different from the community I grew up in.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-28 05:24 pm (UTC)I don't think I'll change. But, perhaps I can cross into their "habitas" and let them know I'm a person they can relate to. I can ask about lawn care. Can express delight at their efforts. Hmmm. Lots to think about.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 08:51 am (UTC)In an unequal society, the need for status becomes a big unconscious urge. We're such prosocial primates, we really love being heard and approved of, and when it's clear that hierarchy's the way we're doing things, we jostle for place on it. We need to prove our fitness for approval, and to have someone to look down on.
It's not all competition, though. There's a satisfaction that "we may not have much, but we keep it nice." Having a home and garden well ordered makes it a calm haven. I grew up with people growing their own because they couldn't afford to buy much fruit and veg, so a productive, well organised garden was what people aspired to, and it gave them enormous pleasure creating it - that changed in the late 80s with the sprouting of big supermarkets on the outskirts of town driving prices down and killing off many of the places where poorer people interacted (the grocer's shop, the post office, the local chemist, etc.).
It's something else, too. It's about the sociability of working class homes. I'd never lived in a neighbourhood where people didn't just drop by unexpectedly here and there, where it wasn't an unwritten rule that unplanned social interaction (kids having friends over on a whim, a sudden decision to have the neighbours over for dinner) was the norm. T's family was my first taste of people not knowing the people who lived on either side of them, and who thought having people drop by unannounced was just rude (also the first people I knew socially who'd had parents and previous generations actually go to university). For me, growing up, it was about having the house and garden orderly as a way of learning to be a responsible person ("It's yours now, so it's up to you to look after it"), and also about being hospitable - it is not easy to relax in a dirty or messy space, so that having your home be clean and organised is a way of being kind and welcoming, whereas it being dirty and messy is about making others uncomfy and unwelcome.
Growing up, there was the stereotype of messy upper middle class people who had enough privilege that they didn't need to care what their homes looked like. It wasn't exactly approved of; it was, though, a sort of marker of never having had to "do for themselves" because they might be living in genteel poverty, but they were still part of the elite. It was assumed that they just felt that someone else would clean up after them; being able to do our own cleaning up made us in some ways more competent than them, even if we'd never have their social advantages.
Seems to me that so many things have changed over the course of a generation that this is not necessarily the way we live, but the attitudes have remained ingrained. We often live far enough away from work, and we work such long hours, now that time for attending to house and garden is severely eaten into; because we tend to stay home in the evenings rather than be in public entertainments and civic work spaces like working men's clubs, Women's Institute/Townswomen's Guilds, civic societies, etc. because we're knackered or can't get a babysitter, etc., we don't have the same hospitality codes; and there's something, too, about the blurring of middle and working classes into a sort of continuum rather than a definite divide between the people who produces office workers and manual labourers - "middle class" used to basically mean business owners, and "working class" meant you did low-paid work for an employer, but now we've more overlap. So being houseproud or not is a complicated thing, all bundled up with assumptions about whether housework and gardening have meaning.
So, for me, home should be a haven, an oasis of calm and comfort - because living in a mess is just stressful - and that includes it being nice for visitors. Still struggling along with achieving that without getting fussy or bothering with keeping up with the Joneses, and doing things in the most eco-friendly and sensible way. One day...