Jim heartfield wrote:
> In message <l03130319b173a79a8c27@[166.84.250.86]>, Doug Henwood
> <dhenwood at panix.com> writes
> >Jim heartfield wrote:
> >
> >>What I am reacting against is the mood that sees working class
> >>consumption as profligacy and waste, but middle class consumption as an
> >>earnest and imaginative investigation of desire.
> >>
> >>Hence my attitude to the car.
> >
> >I'm not sure how you're class-angling the car Jim. "Middle class" people,
> >whoever they are exactly, drive more vehicle miles than poor people. All
> >those suburbanites in their sport utility vehicles - suburban assault
> >vehicles, as they say - aren't investigating their desire, they're fouling
> >the air.
>
> The objection to cars is their mass character. If cars were the preserve
> of the rich (as they were, for example in the early century) then there
> would be no anti-car movement. In Britain there are 22 million car
> owners, which out of a population of sixty million is pretty impressive
> penetration. In no sense is a car a luxury item in England, and, given
> petrol prices, I find it very hard to believe that the same is not true
> of the US.
>
> The class character of the anti-car movement here is written in their
> home county accents. It is entirely characteristic that forms of working
> class mobility should be the subject of middle class panics. A hundred
> years ago outrage surrounded the bicycling gangs of 'East End
> Scorchers'. Nowadays, mass tourism, travelling football (that's soccer
> to you) fans and the car are the subject of upper class distaste.
>
> Also any student of moral panics could tell you that the metaphor of
> pollution that you are drawn to is characteristic of anti-working class
> sentiment. In nineteenth century England middle class reformers
> preoccupied with the 'miasma' they thought was rising up off of working
> class districts built the Victoria Park as a 'fire-break' against the
> East End. The fear the ordinary folks are befouling the beautiful
> countryside is the prejudice of the landed gentry.
>
> By any objective measure - that is as opposed to the subjective distaste
> at the preponderance of flatbacks and recreational vehicles - levels of
> air pollution in America and Europe have been falling for the last forty
> years.
> --
> Jim heartfield
-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu