Feeling It (New Formations).pdf (240.05 kB)
Feeling it: habitat, taste and the new middle class in 1970s Britain
In 1964 the furniture designer and entrepreneur Terence Conran, along with various partners, opened a shop in London selling furniture and household goods. It was a ‘lifestyle shop’ called Habitat. By the late 1970s is was a fixture of many cities and towns across Britain. In this essay I treat Habitat as a taste formation, as part of a structure of feeling that was specific to what many social commentators were calling the ‘new middle class’. This essay charts some of those feelings and the material culture that supported them, and argues for an approach to taste that treats it as an agent of socio-historical change as well as a practice that maintains and reproduces social class. The feelings that Habitat could be seen to activate ranged from ‘cottage urbanism’ and improvised sociability to a sense of middle-class-classlessness. Habitat’s role was ambiguous, nurturing both middle class radicalism and the marketization of democratic impulses. In the transition from welfare state socialism to neoliberal hegemony Habitat’s role was both surreptitious and substantial.
Funding
Habitat and the making of Taste 1964 - 2011; G1272; LEVERHULME TRUST; MRF-2013-158
History
Publication status
- Published
File Version
- Accepted version
Journal
New FormationsISSN
0950-2378Publisher
Lawrence and WishartExternal DOI
Issue
SpringVolume
88Page range
105-122Department affiliated with
- Media and Film Publications
Full text available
- Yes
Peer reviewed?
- Yes