明星八卦

This project questions the idea that Britain has become split between a metropolitan graduate elite and a wider more socially conservative public who object to having liberal policies imposed upon them. 

The landslide election victory of Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party in December 2019 is most frequently interpreted as due to his success in ‘getting Brexit done’ and thus appealing to a silent majority, including the northern working-class inhabitants of former ‘Red Wall’ areas, ‘who lean left on spending and public services but are culturally conservative’. From this perspective, Britain’s departure from the EU potentially enables a return, at least symbolically, to the postwar heyday of a ‘Great Britain’ characterized by political consensus, social deference, a common culture, full male employment, and a rigid gender binary; a context that is often equated with so-called traditional working-class values.

This project examines diaries and other autobiographical writings of a wide range of people to understand social processes such as class consciousness, gender identity, and even our understanding of Britain and Britishness. The project aims to show the extent to which current culture wars and crises can be seen as a continuing consequence of post-WW1 trends – such as universal suffrage and women’s emancipation – which are still shaping contemporary social and cultural divisions. In particular, the project examines how the emergence of new cultural values helps people to live through unprecedented social change.

The research will change how we think about culture wars and social change in Britain.

This Leverhulme Trust Fellowship project  ‘Self-reflexivity, Class Consciousness, Culture Wars and Social Change in Britain’ draws on Prof Hubble’s expertise in researching processes of social value formation in autobiographical narratives, including working-class and women’s writing.