Mode of Program Participation
Academic Scholarship
Participation Type
Paper
Presentation #1 Title
Escape from moral quietism: What might Britain’s chav and Australia’s bogan offer the US’ hillbilly?
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
Across the US, Britain and Australia, debate over how these societies might best respond to the formerly working class children of the 1980’s rightwing revolutions have become commonplace. A (predominately white) working class has been reduced to hillbillies, chavs and bogans: individual failures, unwilling to embrace the opportunities that globalizing capitalism holds out. Differences between the three nations are important. The archetypal hillbilly celebrates independence and finds recourse to welfare shameful. Conservative hillbilly authors such as J.D. Vance (Hillbilly Elegy) champion such values by promoting a self-help morality tale. Vance’s fantasia devalues the role played by rightwing political activists, who successfully shifted social policy from a ‘rights-based’ and political to an ‘opportunity-driven’ and moralistic model. As left scholars such as A.R. Hochschild (Strangers in Their Own Land) shows, many poor US whites do indeed abhor ‘politics’ and actively pride themselves on such moralizing. In Britain and Australia by contrast, the archetypal chav and bogan celebrate ‘getting something for nothing’, as working class author Owen Jones (Chavs) and comedian Pauly Fenech (Housos) suggest. For Jones, chav-ism is a rational ‘in your face’ response to the decimation of working class solidarity and with it, political power under rightwing reformism. For Fenech, bogan-ism similarly represents active rejection of suburban Australian affluence by those unable to enjoy it. This paper compares and contrasts the moral quietism of the hillbilly with the active refusal of the chav and the bogan. And, it considers possibilities for undermining moral quietism and repoliticizing politics in the world of the hillbilly by translating Jones’ strategy of promoting media debate over economic redistribution and Fenech’s strategy of celebrating resourcefulness, inclusiveness and anti-consumerism.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Andy Scerri is an Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Political Science at Virginia Tech. His main research area is environmental political theory. He has also published research on transformations in prevailing ideas of citizenship in Australia, the US and Britain since the 1980s.
Escape from moral quietism: What might Britain’s chav and Australia’s bogan offer the US’ hillbilly?
Across the US, Britain and Australia, debate over how these societies might best respond to the formerly working class children of the 1980’s rightwing revolutions have become commonplace. A (predominately white) working class has been reduced to hillbillies, chavs and bogans: individual failures, unwilling to embrace the opportunities that globalizing capitalism holds out. Differences between the three nations are important. The archetypal hillbilly celebrates independence and finds recourse to welfare shameful. Conservative hillbilly authors such as J.D. Vance (Hillbilly Elegy) champion such values by promoting a self-help morality tale. Vance’s fantasia devalues the role played by rightwing political activists, who successfully shifted social policy from a ‘rights-based’ and political to an ‘opportunity-driven’ and moralistic model. As left scholars such as A.R. Hochschild (Strangers in Their Own Land) shows, many poor US whites do indeed abhor ‘politics’ and actively pride themselves on such moralizing. In Britain and Australia by contrast, the archetypal chav and bogan celebrate ‘getting something for nothing’, as working class author Owen Jones (Chavs) and comedian Pauly Fenech (Housos) suggest. For Jones, chav-ism is a rational ‘in your face’ response to the decimation of working class solidarity and with it, political power under rightwing reformism. For Fenech, bogan-ism similarly represents active rejection of suburban Australian affluence by those unable to enjoy it. This paper compares and contrasts the moral quietism of the hillbilly with the active refusal of the chav and the bogan. And, it considers possibilities for undermining moral quietism and repoliticizing politics in the world of the hillbilly by translating Jones’ strategy of promoting media debate over economic redistribution and Fenech’s strategy of celebrating resourcefulness, inclusiveness and anti-consumerism.
