Year: 2004
Type: article
Abstract: Class and culture may be among the most difficult things to examine, if only because they are used so often in ways which make them seem self-evident.As a result, despite a renewed academic interest in class as a persisting marker of social difference, there has been little attempt to theorize contemporary working-class culture in Canada.At the same time, on the street it seems that cultural activists have less misgivings when it comes to organizing and representing class culture in the form of widespread urban festivals.Clearly, class culture -in one form or anotheris still an issue in Canadian society.This research presents such cultural festivals as significant windows into how notions of class and cultural resistance are produced and reintroduced.They are not the only sites where these categories and strategies are challenged and defined, but they represent the largest and most cohesive articulations of working-class culture in Canada.In addition, as both "sights" and "sites" they call attention to a crucial factor in the interplay between class, culture, and power: the importance of space in constructing notions of dominant and resistant cultures.Following the work of cultural geographers who have argued that both class and culture cannot be fully understood without an appreciation of space, I focus on the Vancouver Mayworks festival since nineteen eightyeight to bring a geographic sensitivity to "working-class" cultural production.I ask how space -both material and representedhas been influential in determining the shape of the Vancouver Mayworks festival's activism.Exploring this question necessitates a multi-spatial framework which, rather than using one theoretical approach to space (eg.place, scale), attempts to integrate several to more fully represent the range of spatial factors at work in Mayworks.I identify four key frames at which Mayworks seems to locate its class-conscious activism in space: the work site, rural and urban landscapes, public space, and the more abstract but critical concept of scale.Together, these form a spatial theorization of cultural activism which seeks to investigate the contemporary production of class culture.I would like to thank all those who directly or indirectly influenced my work and who encouraged me towards its completion.First of all, thanks to those artists and Mayworks activists who opened their homes and memories so that I might better understand their practice and politics.My gratitude also to Tom Wayman and Mark Leier for early readings of the manuscript and valuable feedback; to my friend Adrienne Burk for her constant support and for clearing the path ahead and reporting back; to my two external readers, Geraldine and Tom Nesbit
Source: Summit (Simon Fraser University)
Author: Aurian Haller
Language: English
Subfield: Urban Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W181369421