A Taste for Gardening: Classed and Gendered PracticesRoutledge, 2016 M03 16 - 228 pages Is the garden a consumption site where identities are constructed? Do gardeners make aesthetic choices according to how they are positioned by class and gender? This book presents the first scholarly analysis of the relationship between media interest in gardening and cultural identities. With an examination of aesthetic dispositions as a symbolic mode of communication closely aligned to peoples' identities and drawing on ethnographic data gathered from encounters with gardeners, this book maps a typology of gardening taste, revealing that gardening - how plants are chosen, planted and cared for - is a classed and gendered practice manifested in specific types of visual aesthetics. This timely and original book develops a new area within cultural studies while contributing to debates about lifestyle and lifestyle media, consumption, class and methodology. A must read for anybody concerned with or intrigued by the cultural construction of identification practices. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 15 | |
Theoretical Concepts and Framework | 37 |
Gardening Ordinariness and History | 55 |
Garden Lifestyle Television and Media Culture | 81 |
6 Class Taste and Gardening | 109 |
7 Gender and Gardening | 131 |
What Ordinary Gardeners Do With Garden Lifestyle Media | 157 |
Class Emotion and Value | 177 |
Appendix 1 | 187 |
Appendix 2 | 191 |
Appendix 3 | 195 |
Bibliography | 197 |
Index | 209 |
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Common terms and phrases
Alan Titchmarsh allotment analysis Anne argues bedding plants Bourdieu British Brunsdon Butler Chaney chapter characterised Charlie Dimmock Christopher Lloyd class and gender colour construction consumer consumption contemporary context council estate Crouch and Ward cultural capital cultural studies domestic garden Doris emotional empirical ethnographic everyday example experience Felski female gardeners femininity feminist floristry flowers garden aesthetics garden centre garden history garden lifestyle garden makeover garden media gardening practices gardening tastes gendered gardening habitus history of gardening Homefront identified identity interviews investments Keith knowledge labour landscape lawn leisure liberal humanist lifestyle garden lifestyle ideas lifestyle programming lifestyle texts Lisa lived located look magazines masculine Maud means middle-class gardeners MINTEL Monty Don mundane offered ordinary gardening perform personality-interpreters Phoebe popular post-modern produce recognised relation role Rosemary Savage sense shows Skeggs social space Spen Valley Stephanie subjects symbolic violence theory tidy traditional viewers working-class gardeners