British Cultural Identities

by Mike Storry (Editor), Peter Childs (Editor)

A book about British cultural identities raises a number of questions: Whose Britain? Whose culture? Whose identity? Do a majority of people in the UK think of themselves as British anyway? This book analyses contemporary British identity from the various and changing ways in which people who live in the UK position themselves and are positioned by their culture today. Each chapter is clearly structured around key themes, has a timeline of important dates and a list of recent British cultural examples drawn from books, films and TV programmes. In addition there is recommended reading, questions and exercises chosen by experienced teachers, and tables and photographs throughout.

Genres: Nonfiction

320 pages, Paperback

First published February 6, 1997

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I studied abroad in London in Spring 1999, and one of our instructors, a British sociologist whose favorite saying was "the Queen rayns but she does not roo'" (= "the Queen reigns but she does not rule"), gave us a couple chapters out of this to read. I recently rediscovered them in my bin of college stuff (thanks to pandemic cleaning-out) and found the content to be either 1) still accurate, or 2) of historical interest, so I bought a cheap copy of the book online. I was surprised to find that my fellow study-abroad students and I were the target market for it--it's aimed at "overseas students of English language and British culture" (p. xviii). This explains why I understood 95% of it, I suppose.

Yes, Diana was still alive when this was published. Also, note the very 1997 observation that "CD Rom, the internet, virtual reality, faxes, pagers and mobile phones have contributed to the increased access to knowledge and the simultaneous location of culture in the home" (p. 325). So some of it is certainly dated--although, as with the discussion of growing minority populations in the UK, for example, the dated content often hints at much greater changes to come in British society.

However, the book helped me understand some persistent characteristics of British society. For example, the concept of "passive belief" was helpful shorthand for the phenomenon of many Brits identifying with the Church of England and Christianity on some level, but not being active Christians or members of the CoE.

Finally, in 2016 I was in Britain for a music workshop, at which I shared a hotel room with a British woman I hadn't met before. We discovered that we couldn't talk about "telly" because she watched mostly American shows (a trend described in this book!), while I tend to watch British ones. There was definitely some fretting about the influence of American culture on Britain in this book--another trend that was really only getting started at that point, for good or ill.

[catarina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pior que o outro socorrooooooo não aguento mais cultura inglesa

[Tan Dang]

it is very good

[Borjana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting...

[Eksis]

good

[Iris Windmeijer]

A great, informative book that is worthwile reading.

[Thu Trang]

............