slightly altered

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PAPERS aus dem

INTEffi~ATIONALEN INSTITUT FÜR UMWELT l~D GESELLSCHAFT des

WISSENSCHAFTSZENTRUMS BERLIN

II/77 - 7

RAT-INFESTED SLUM OR GLORIOUS HERITAGE?

An Introduction to Rubbish Theory By

Michael Thompson+

This paper, in slightly altered form, appears as part of the forthcoming book:

Michael Thompson: Rubbish Theory: The Creation and Destruction of Value. Oxford University Press

~ Visiting Fellow

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THE INTERNATIONAL INSTITUT FOR ENVIRONMENT AND SOCIETY SCIENCE CENTER BERLIN

The International Institute for Environment and Society {IIES) of the Science Center Berlin is to contribute

to the improved understanding of important social and behav- ioural dimensions of environmental problems. Specifically the goal of the Institute is, through international research, to advance the knowledge of assumptions, alternatives, and interactions of environmental goals and prograrnrnes.

To accomplish this, the Institute is undertaking applied and basic research in the following eight program areas:

o Environmental awareness: diffusion, development and political salience

o Environmental impact of consumer behaviour

o Environmental quality: indicators and standards

o Environmental policy: instruments, institutions, and implementation

o Environmental quality and other societal goals: harmony and conflict

o Business activity and the environment

o International interests and interactions in environmental policy

o Impact of new technologies on environmental quality

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There's an art

to

writing a classitied advertisement. A way of wording it so that the quality,of the product or service you're

offering really makes an impact on the reader.

lt's an easy art ^toacquire with four simple rules to follow.

1. Get the reacler's attention. 2. Arouse his interest.

3. Create a desire for what you have to offer. 4. Stimulate action.

And The Times sales staff are experts at it.

So

\Yhy wri te your own acl vertisemen t. when \ve've got specialists who will do it for you. All you have to do is ring 01-236 8033.

Then sit back and expect results.

And with The Times Clas::;ifiecl, people get them.

_ . _ THINK TIMES CLASSIFIED

l'HE.TI:t>rES, PRIXTIXG HOUSE SQUARE, LOXDOX .EC4. TE~EPHO~f. 'l<-::!~~ ö033

r

'·~

_...._.... ~-.1 . . .. . ... ~-,... _ .... . _ _ , _ _ .• _,:4.-o."..JJ~-'-( .,...,·~'( •'..U. • " "'l-11'• • ~

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Relationship of this Paner to the Institute's Program This pa~er, "Rat-Infested Slum or Glorious Heritage?'', contributes to the IIES proryram area: Environmental

Aw?reness: Diffusion, Develo~ment, and Political Salience.

It explores the way individuals assiryn value to goods,

thereby creating certain patterns of behavior towards them.

The formation of attitudes associated with certain kinds of residential urban bliqht are discussed in the paper, as well as the formation of attitudes towards certain kinds of solid wastes. The paper is useful in illuminating some of the unusual social institutions surrounding the question of which old goods are valuable and which worthless.

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Abstract

The relationship between the way we see objects and the way we act towards them is explored. With objects that are clearly durable (increase in value over time) or transient (decrease in value over time) , the way we see them determines the way we act towards them. But in the case of equivocal objects i t is the way we act towards them that determines the way we

(and others) see them. The hypothesis is put forward that a third category of rubbish (zero value with time irrelevant) serves as a covert limbo through which objects may be transferred from transience to durability. This category system and its relationship to the social system that i t renuers meaning- ful is illustrated by applying i t to housing. It clarifies the statement of~the British Housing Minister: "These rat- infested slums must be demolished. Old terraced houses may have a certain snob-appeal to mernbers of the middle class,

but they are not suitable accomodation for working-class tenants."

Zusammenfassung

Die Beziehungen zwischen dem, wie wir Objekte betrachten, und wie wir sie behandeln, sind bereits erförscht. Bei Objekten, die eindeutig von Dauer (ihr Wert steigt.mit der Zeit) oder vergänglich (ihr Wert sinkt mit der Zeit) sind, bestimmt unsere Betrachtungsweise die Art, wie wir uns diesen Dingen gegenüber verhalten. Es wird die Hypothese aufgestellt, daß eine dritte Kategorie, die des Abfalls (Dinge ohne Wert, unabhängig von aer Zeit), als verborgene Rumpelkammer dient, in der Objekte

.

vom Zustand der Vergänglichkeit in den der Dauerhaftigkeit übergehen können. DiesesKategoriesystem und seine Beziehungen zum sozialen System, das es ausdrückt und möglich macht, wird in seiner Anwendung auf Wohnungen illustriert. Es verdeutlicht die Äußerung des britischen Wohnungsbauministers: "Diese ratten- verseuchten Slums gehören abgerissen. Alte Reihenhäuser mögen

zwar einen gewissen Snob-Appeal für Angehörige der ~1ittel

schicht haben, sind aber keine angemessene Unterkunft für Arbeiter."

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An advertisment in The Times promoting The Times' classified adv€rtisement services shows a pair of identical vases of oriental style. One is labelled, in crude block capitals,

"Secondhand"; the other, in elegant script within a black border, "Antique:-"'The inscription above the vases reads:

"It's not what you say, i t ' s the way you say it."

our appreciation of the advertisement is adequate proof that objects may be seen in two very different ways, one aesthe- tically and economically superior to the other. It is also proof that in certain circumstances we may be able, to our considerable advantage, to control the way in which we and others see an object. The pair of vases in The Times advertisement has been well chosen to illustrate this flexibility.

The label "Secondhand" leads us to see one vase as a worthless piece of tat; a grotesque present from, perhaps,an equally-grotesque relative. The label "Antique'' leads us to see its mate as the real thing; a beautiful, delicate,

valuable, old, Chinese ceramic Qbjet d'art.

This flexibility does not extend to all objects. Most objects are only visible in one or other of these two ways and their identities are so certain that the labels "Secondhand" and

"Antique" are superfluous. The used car in the back street car mart or the Queen Anne walnut tallboy advertised in

Country Life are perhaps more typical than The Times' vases.

So I would like to start by identifying two very different ways in which objects can be seen. In our culture, objects are assigned to one or other of two overt categories which I will call "transient" and "durable." Objects in the

transient category decrease in value over time and have finite expected life-spans - 12 years for a motor car for example. Objects in the durable category increase in value over time and have infinite expected life-spans. The used car falls into the transient category - the Queen Anne tallboy into the durable category. Now, the way we act towards an object varies systematically with its category membership.

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For instance, we treasure, display, ensure and perhaps even rnortgage the antique Chinese vase, but we detest and

probably destroy its secondhand rnate.

Obviously, when i t cornes to objects, there is a relationship between the way we see thern and the way we act towards thern.

But what is the nature of this relationship? Does the way we see an object deterrnine the way we act towards i t , or does the way we act towards an object deterrnine the way we see it? So far as the unequivocal objects, such as the used car and the Queen Anne tallboy, are concerned, simple ob- servation of the rnarket will confirrn that the way we see thern deterrnines the way we act towards thern. But in the case of the equivocal objects, such as The Tirnes' vases, i t is the way we act towards thern that deterrnines the way we

(and others) see thern. It is an obvious exarnple of what I feel is a general phenornenon~and as an anthropologist I

should be able to provide a formal description - an adequate theory - to account for what is going on here. For category systerns are not free to just float about. They are closely tied to the social situation that they render rneaningful. A

co~~on response for the_ theorist is to treat the data as if the category framewerk deterrnined the social action, and then to treat i t again ~ if the social action deterrnined the category frarnework. The trouble is that neither approach is suited to my problern which is to try to understand the circurnstances under which _an eguivocal object rnay becorne unequivocal and vice versa. I have to corne at i t from a different direction altogether.

Innovation and creativity can only arise where there is sorne rnanipulative freedorn - that is, within the region of flexibility: among the eguivocal objects. But access to innovation and creativity is not freely available to all the rnernbers of our society. Differential access is irnposed through the social order. For those near the bottorn, there really is no region of flexibility: for those near the top, there may be a wide range of manipulative freedorn (and, of course, The

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Times is a paper for top people!). By relating these differences in the breadth of the region of flexibility to the various levels of the society we uncover the control mechanism within the system; the manner in which transience and durability are imposed upon the world of objects. It is hard to take aboard the fact that durability and transience do not derive from the intrinsic physical properties of objects, but inescapably we must recognise that these qualities are conferred upon objects by society itself.

The operation of such a control mechanism would seem inevitably to give rise to a self-perpetuating system. It is de- cidedly advantageaus to own durable objects (since they increase in value over time whilst transient objects decrease).

Those people near the top have the power to make things durable and to make things transient, so they can ensure that their own objects are always durable and that those of others are always transient. They are like a foothall team whose cent·re-forward also happens to be the referee:

they just can't lose.

A paradoxical question now arises. How can such a self-perpetuating system ever change itself? How can the other side ever score a goal? In this case the equivalent of such a goal is the transfer of an object from the transient to the durable category: a transfer which defies the control mechan-

ism yet nevertheless does happen. We are all familiar with the way despised Victorian objects have become sought-after antiques; with bakelite art deco ashtrays that have become collector's items, with old bangers transformed into vintage rootor cars. I would like to suggest that the answer is this:

The two overt categories which I have isolated, the transient and the durable, do not exhaust the universe of objects.

There are some objects (those of zero and unchanging value) which do not fall into either of these two categories and these constitute a third covert category, ''rubbish".

My hypothesis is that this covert rubbish category is not

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subject to the control rnechanism (which is concerned primari- ly with the overt part of the system, the valuable and socially significant objects) and so rubbish is able to provide the path for the seerningly impossible transfer of an object from transience to durability. What I believe happens is that a transient object gradually declining in value and in expected ~life-span may slide across into rubbish: into a timeless and value-less limbo: where at some later date, if i t has survived, i t rnay be discovered by a creative Times reader and successfullv transferred to durability.

Transient

H

^Rubbish

1-1--~P.II

^Durable

The conseguence of this is, that in order to study the social control of value, we have to study rubbish.

Rubbish theory, with its bizarre subject matter and engag- ing paradoxes, is often smiled upon by economists, sociolc- gists and physical scientists as if i t were some Wodehousean corner of Academia: an amusing backwater, like The Drones' Club or Lord Ernsworth's estate, far-removed from the main stream of social life. There is the assumption that, though i t may hold for Victoriana and bakelite ashtrays, i t does not, of course, hold for major components of the economy such as housing. There is the assumption that, though the qualities of durability, transience and rubbishness may be subject to a certain social malleability, this variation takes place within severe natural limits. Both these assumptions are mistaken.

The social malleability is apparent even when,we examine the hard-core rubbish of body products. We can draw up a list of body products and then distinguish between thosethat are rubbish and those that are not. The rubbish items would include excrement, urine, finger and toe-nail clippings, pus, menstrual blood, scabs ^~ndso on .•. The non-rubbish items would include milk, tears, babies (except in extreme ecolo- gical circles with the slogan:"babies are pollution") and,

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sometimes, sperm . If rubbishness were self-evident and de- rived from the intrinsic physical properties of objects then this division of body products into rubbish and non-rubbish items would be fixed and unchangeable. Yet, in recent years, some body products have crossed from one side to the other.

Phlegm is now clearly seen as rubbish but, until quite re- cently, i t had a noble connotation. English phlegm was ex- pectorated from splendidly stiff upper lips. The loss of the empire rendered the English upper lip flaccid and English

phlegm ceased to be the magical substance that kept the little brown native in his place, and became instead a repulsive

green lump in the mouth during the later stages of Asian 'flu.

The same with sweat. Once i t was good, honest and noble. In 1940 Churchill could rally the Dunkirk spirit with offers of

"blood, sweat, and tears". Today sweat is firmly in the rubbish category helped on its way by the deodorant explo- sion (products like US and Femfresh:"Is vaginal odour your problem? Don't make i t his too".)

so, only if one remains within severe 9ultural and temporal confines can one sustain the commonsense belief that rubbish is defined by intrinsic physical properties. Step outside these limits and one sees that the boundary between rubbish and non-rubbish moves in response to social pressures.

Qne example - the Packington Street affair - will show the way in which housing is subject to exactly the same dynamics

as bakelite ashtrays. The Packington Estate in Islington in North London consisted of one long street of early Victo-

rian terraced houses called Packington Street and a nurober of smaller streets of similar houses which included one side of a large garden square - Union Square. The council decided that this privately owned estate should be compulsorily purchased, demolished and replaced by a complex of modern council flats.

As usual, the interval between decision and implementation was lengthy and the houses suffered deterioration through planners' blight. Even so, their condition was sufficiently

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good for a (largely middle-class) pressure group to oppose the demolition. They claimed that the houses were structur- ally sound, needing only modernisation, bathrooms in the rear extensions and so on •.. and that they were architec- turally and environmentally valuable. The controversy raged and eventually reached the Housing Minister, who at that time was Mr. Richard Crossman. He decided in favour of demolition. In his speech announcing this decision he said:

"These rat-infested slums must be demolished. Old terraced houses may have a certain snob-appeal to members of the middle-class but they are not suitable accomodation for working-class tenants."

From this amazing statement, we can extract the Crossman definition of a slum which runs something like this: "An old building which, occupied by members of the middle-class, forms part of our glorious heritage, is, if occupied by

members of the working-class, a rat-infested slum." So

Mr. Crossman would have agreed with my thesis that slums are socially determined and that such physical1 physiological and economic considerations as poor living standards, lack of services anu amenities, poor health, dampness, inadequate light, inadequate cooking facilities, over-crowding, high fire-risk, whilst real enough are essentially epi-phenomena of a concealed social process. They are the effects, not the cause.

No great or revolutionary insights are involved in the reali- sation that those who own and control durable objects enjoy more power and prestige than those who live entirely in a world of transience or, worse still, a world of rubbish.

Similarly, when we look at examples of successful transfers of objects from rubbish to durability we see that, at the same time, thejcr ownership is transferred from the rag- and-bone man to the knowledgable collector: from the junk- shop window to the Bond Street showroom: from Steptoe and Son to Bevis Hillier et al.

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Not even Mr. Crossman could stem the innovative tide of the early sixties that transformed many square miles of inner London from rat-infested slum into glorious heritage - a phenomenon now known as "gentrification". In many ways

"gentrification" is an unfortunate term: for those young couples - actors, graphic designers, architects, art school teachers and television executives - who formed the vanguard of the Frontier Middle Class were₁we can now see with the benefit of hindsight, forceful and successful social climbers who competed (on very unequal terms) with the indigenous

inhabitants of those run-down areas who,alas,had no access to durability. Semething no gentleman would do (or need to do!) .

Those much-satirised trendies, crashing social barriers with the same insensitive arrogance that they knocked-through

the dividing walls of their terraced Georgian homes, believed themselves to be the harbingers of that egalitarian ^millenni~

where we would all end up like David Frost - classless and close-cropped, successful and suited by Cecil Gee. In the grey economic light of the Seventies, we see thern consoli- dating their social gains with Volvo estate cars, the country life and private schools.

The trendy makes his early Victorian house older by fitting a six-panelled Georgian front door. His Cockney neighbour makes his house younger by flushing the original four- panelled door with hardboard. The Trendy having access to durability is trying, successfully as i t turns out, to push his house from the rubbish to the durable category. His neighbour liv:ing in a world of transience is trying, rather un-

successfully, to prevent his house from sliding down the slippery slope from the transient to the rubbish category.

The egalitarianism of a world bereft of durables can be, and in this case is, spectac\.üä.rJ:.y-- competi tive. Along wi th

flushed front doors go plastic flowers, nylon net curtains, highly polished motors and the whole well-scrubbed, sharply-

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dressed, cigar-smoking, fiver-waving bravado of the Saturday night down the boozer. The whole business of putting on the style - the devotion to sport, often expensive sports like power-boat racing, duck-shooting or trout- or shark-fishing, the gambling, the leather coats, Silver Cross prams and

elaborate hair-do's of the wives, the conspicuous consumption of drink, tobacco, sea-foods and mohair suitings beloved by street-traders, crash-repair specialists, offset lithographs, asphalters, and self-employed central-heating engineers,

carpenters and ornamental plasterers, all serve to define an aristocracy of transience, piratically scornful of those who put their trust in durables, and viciously exclusive of

social rubbish. Their motto is "easy come, easy go" for, in the Land of Transience, the man with the highest turnever rules, O.K.?

The secondhand car dealer whose ageing Ford Consuls filled the front garden of a rubbish house I once considered buying was pessimistic: "All coming down, you know. All Darkies and Bubbles in them houses. Diabolical state. Cook chickens with the insides still in them. The way some people live - f••

disgusting."

The Trendy and the Cockney,though their behaviour is widely divergent, are both perfectly rational in terms of their differing relations to the transient to rubbish to durable transfers. That is, the category system furnishes each of them with a different set of rules. But what about the despised social rubbish - the Darkies and the Bubbles?

(rhyming slang- bubble and squeak: Greek).They don't seem to know about the rules at all. The Greek Cypriots, in particular, are much-addicted to metal-frame windows and to brick facades painted pink with all the mortar laboriously picked out in pale blue. As the transfers to durability gain momentum so Conservation Areas are designated, and legislation is now contemplated to forcibly prevent the

Bubble from going to this enormaus trouble to knock thousands of pounds off the market value of his house. This would seem

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to be the thin end of a very nasty wedge. For the thick end of this attack on rubbish is the gas-oven and the elimination of those who have no place within the system. If there is one thing worse than someone painting the front of his

Regency villa pink and blue, i t is stopping him from painting i t pink and blue.

so my, admittedly tentative, hypothesis is that the category framewerk of objects and, in particular, the existence of the durable category permits the uneven distribution of both power and prestige within our society. And i t forms the basis for the cultural differences between the various classes that are ranged along that distribution. The per- missible, but carefully controlled, transfers between these categories allow the degree of social mobility sufficient to modify these classes so that they accurately reflect the inevitably changing distribution of power within society.

That is, they permit the continuous realignment of power and prestige.

Now, you miqht sav: "but power and pre~tige always go to- gether, so how can they need re-aligning?". Well, in the West this indeed has tended to be the case, thanks to the transfers between categories, but in India for instance there are virtually no transfers through rubbish and power and

prestige vary quite independently. The meat-eating Prince, for example, sits firmlv at the head of the power structure but he defers to the vegetarian Brahmin within the hierarchy of caste, and there is no reason why nower and prestiae .should not be<;in to vary ^jncl.e~end.ently here as w-ell.

The degree of control needed to ensure this continuous realignment of power and prestige is not easily achieved. If control is too loose, power and prestige will remain aligned but the status differential will be eroded as too much is transferred too rapidly between the categories and the em- phatic differences between them can no langer be maintained.

That is, stratification will decrease, the durable category

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will disappear and the society will move towards the egalitarian condition.

If control is too tight, the distribution of power and

prestige will tend to drift apart, since the transfers that would keep them aligned are not allowed to happen. In this way, power and prestige will increasingly vary independently of one another: those near the top of the prestige league concerning themselves less and less with objects as sources of power and more and more with the embracing of some objects, and with the rejection of others, as indicators of purity and

of separation.

·so, by considering just the category framewerk for objects and its relation to the social order and then asking what will happen as control is tightened or loosened, we obtain a simple triangular range of transformations within which those supposedly fundamental properties , stratification and competition, emerge as secondary characteristics.

A T I F I

c

A T I 0 N

CASTE

THE RUBBISH TRIANGLE

No Transfers Throu h Rubbish Controlled Transfers Through Rubbish Uncon- trolled transfer through rubbish.

Durable

CLASS

Emergence of Durable category.

Then controlled transfer from rubbish EGALITARIAN

C 0 M P E T I T I 0 N

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There is surely somethinq to be said for a theory that allows one to take the road to Kathmandu without even leaving one's deskintrendy N.W. 1!+

(+ The London postal district where the trendiest of the trendy settlers live.)