Reflections

To fill a small gap in my research’s outputs and to change pace a little, I thought it would be fitting to reflect on my work so far and present a wee discussion of my goals, my progress and my thoughts on the topic so far. As you can probably guess, the disturbance in output in squarely down to the influence of the coronavirus and the subsequent shutdown.

The plan was to turn from a Scotland-wide scope to a more localised focus on Edinburgh over the summer. To do this, I intended to visit the Moving Images Archive in the Kelvin Hall (a brilliant resource, which I would recommend any researcher visit at least once) in Glasgow to view early Edinburgh Corporation-sponsored films and compare them to those in Glasgow of the same period. Elizabeth Lebas covered the period of municipal film-making in Glasgow from the late nineteenth century through to the nineteen-seventies in her book Forgotten Futures (a great read, recommended to me by Jesse Olszynko-Gryn). My idea was to investigate whether or not her readings of those films were specific to Glasgow and, if they weren’t, what stood out about how the Edinburgh Corporation presented the city and its environs. Alas, the archives are all shut and the digitized collection of films on the SMIA website is limited, so that particular idea has been put on hold.

Instead, I’ve decided to switch the plan up a little bit. Rather than setting aside a couple of months to research Edinburgh as a whole, the work on the city is happening alongside a focus into one of my target areas – the Southside. Compared to the other neighbourhoods under study – Pilton and Craigmillar – the Southside has a much longer history as a built-up are of inner-city Edinburgh and so the time needed to be spent on it, it think, will be considerably longer than the others. It also developed in tandem with the city from the 1700s onward and so tying in major events in the history of the development of Edinburgh, such as the construction of the New Town and its bridges to the Old Town, would be easy – or at least, that’s the way it seems to me.

My research and outputs so far have really been limited to the period up until 1939, and even at that my twentieth century knowledge is still limited. This is something that has been bothering me and I am keen to start work on inter-war and post-war housing. However, the amount of time spent on the Edwardian, Victorian and earlier periods have been very fruitful. For example, I have learned a good deal about both housing as a commodity, the status afforded to those living in certain types of housing and the development of a consumer economy in Scotland. The latter is particularly important: in my work with Castle Rock Edinvar, one of the main themes to be navigated through is consumer culture in housing; that is, houses as sites of consumption and houses as consumer goods themselves. Much primary and secondary information has been discovered relating to the types of decoration, furniture and work tools present in homes and the outlets and entertainment where people would spend their money (if they had it).

I am also eager to get down to more detailed and specialised writing. So far I have, in my last two blog posts, only really given a broad overview of what I had learned over the first few months of work. I am still not one hundred percent happy with the level of analysis present in them, but with the need to move on to more precise subjects I feel as though they are the best that I could do without spending an excess amount of time on them. In any case, I feel that they give a somewhat comprehensive understanding of the issues surrounding class and housing in pre-1945 Scotland despite their lack of fine points. My aim for the rest of the year is to produce more detailed and nuanced histories – an aim to which, hopefully, a more localised focus will be more favourable.

In my last blog post, I posited that the history of housing in Scotland is the history of class division and conflict. Given that my scope was mostly pre-twentieth century, it may be the case that with the introduction of council housing and the subsequent rise in owner-occupancy in Britain that class plays a much more subtle role going forward. From my readings so far it certainly seems that class does figure significantly into council housing allocation: people previously living in torn-down slum areas were not considered to be suitable candidates for housing in New Towns such as East Kilbride and Livingston, those places were reserved for more ‘respectable’ workers, and instead were homed in high-rise flats and schemes on the periphery of cities. This sort of discrimination, coupled with the class character of the designers, the administrators and the builders of council housing, paints, even from a cursory glance, a picture ridden with class issues.

However strongly class figures into this history, though, the picture may not be complete looking through a strictly Marxian filter. It is incredibly tempting to reach for that old, reliable tool, invaluable in explaining the difficulties faced by workers and the working poor, but other analyses may be more suited depending on the focus. The middle-class obsession with sanitation and their efforts to discipline working-class people and their environment to fit their sanitary and medical standards speaks to a Foucauldian approach; on the other hand an analysis of consumerism and the effects it presents in twentieth century culture would be better facilitated by Zygmunt Bauman’s work. Whatever the case, more than one set of tools will be necessary to completely understand the social tensions, ideology and practice in Scottish housing.

My research into the Southside of Edinburgh should be completed by the end of June. From then, I will move onto the Pilton or Craigmillar area. Another blog post will be up next month, but given the need to compile more and more research, it will most likely not be related to the project. I am considering writing a bit about my dissertation project and findings from 2019. Watch this space.

To conclude, Coronavirus has definitely impacted the research and outputs, but thankfully it has been minimal. I am incredibly grateful to be able to keep working on this and to stay employed through this incredibly stressful and uncertain time. Especially so considering the disruption I have watched my friends endure – unemployment either on furlough or forced onto the terrible Universal Credit system, loved ones dying or falling ill, troublesome landlords looking for rent payments and threatening eviction and a general sense of malaise and anxiety. Being able to work has been a welcome distraction and I honestly do not know how I would have been able to cope without it. I am feeling positive about the work and am looking forward to delivering some much-needed research into areas left behind and marginalised.