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Feeling it: habitat, taste and the new middle class in 1970s Britain

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journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 23:53 authored by Ben HighmoreBen Highmore
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 Formations

ISSN

0950-2378

Publisher

Lawrence and Wishart

Issue

Spring

Volume

88

Page range

105-122

Department affiliated with

  • Media and Film Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2016-01-07

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2017-03-02

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2016-01-07

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