Year: 2019
Type: article
Abstract: An invitation to a public cultural sociologyOn 15 January 2019, along with millions of people around the world, I was watching the live stream from the British House of Commons.Collectively, we saw the spectacle unfold.Parliamentarians shouting, booing, cheering and leering.Emotional speeches for and against the EU, Britain and Brexit, especially this Brexit.The Speaker of the House shouting 'Order!Order!', instantly becoming an Internet meme.Finally, we watched as MPs crammed into one crowded and another rather empty hall, posting illicit group selfies on Twitter, as Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit deal, for which she had negotiated for almost two years, was voted down.Which was exactly the outcome that everybody knew was coming.So why was I watching?Why were we all watching?There are many possible answers to this.The appeal of a good tragedy, promising to end with a stage strewn with corpses, the chorus lamenting human hubris.The effectiveness of a well-hyped global media event.The possibility to watch one of the fateful moments of twenty-first century.But having just read 'From "having" to "being"', Michèle Lamont's inspiring BJS lecture, I think that an important reason for the global appeal of the Brexit saga is that it dramatizes the 'diagnosis' of the socio-cultural crisis that Lamont describes in her lecture.The anguish and anger of the increasingly uncertain, precarious, unrecognized 'bottom half', causing political instability and polarization -though not without the help from politicians, journalists and opinion makers who converted anguish into votes.The exhausted upper-middle classes, glued to their screens in their comfortable but heavily mortgaged homes, still shaken about the discovery that cultural hegemony does not make electoral majority.The
Source: British Journal of Sociology
Author: Giselinde Kuipers
Institution: University of Amsterdam
Language: English
Topic: Social and Cultural Dynamics
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,840
OpenAlex ID: W2951273728