Long, Paul Leslie (2001) The aesthetics of class in post-war Britain. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

Existing histories of post-war Britain offer limited perspectives on how, why
and where working-class culture became the subject that Raymond Williams
described as 'a key issue in our own time'. Little of the work that has attended to
this issue has examined it beyond its anthropological sense as 'a whole way of
life'. In contrast, a concept of the 'aesthetic' is enlisted here as an apposite way
of approaching the idea of culture in its more limited sense, defuied by Williams
as 'the arts and learning - the special processes of discovery and creative effort'.
This thesis locates the issue of working-class culture in the context of the postwar
settlement as an aspect of the mentalites of Welfare State Britain. It suggests
that there was a re-imagining of the majority as part of a wider, democratic
reconceptualisation of the public and cultural spheres. This idea is explored
through the study of a range of contemporaneous projects designed to describe,
validate, reclaim, rejuvenate and indeed generate an 'authentic' working-class
culture. These projects include the wartime activities of the Council for the
Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA), the post-war Folk Revival, the
work of Richard Hoggart, radio producer Charles Parker, Arnold Wesker's
Centre 42 project and how creative practices pursued in post-war education
engaged with concepts of working-class culture. The aesthetic framework is
enlisted also to the framing of the discourses, assumptions and idealism that
impelled these projects. What is revealed are the historically specific
conceptualisations of class, culture and politics that informed and limited this
work, the Utopian ambition behind it and the manner in which ordinary people
were represented and encouraged to represent themselves.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Working class -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th century, Great Britain -- History -- 20th century, Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 1945-
Official Date:	September 2001
Dates:	Date Event September 2001 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of Social History
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Steedman, Carolyn
Sponsors:	University of Warwick. Dept. of Social History
Extent:	viii, 423 leaves
Language:	eng

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