Book review: The Myth of the Great Depression

The Myth of the Great Depression
David Potts (2009)
Scribe Publications; 420 pages.
*****

Years ago, in a high school history class, I got one of those dread assignments to go out and interview a grandparent about WWII at home.  I bottled the attempt at asking, and I was even more loath to be dispatched out to an old folks' home to interview someone there.  But I knew well enough what the interview should include: make do and mend, growing food, news on the wireless, that sort of thing.  So I made the interview transcript up.  (And got an A.)

Having far more ethical scruples now, I would of course never fabricate an interview.  The point of the story is that I got away with it then because I knew the dominant imagery; I might not have had the conversation, but I knew already the narrative I was meant to take from it. 

This is common enough for WWII, and common, too, for the depression of the 30s.  I'll bet most of us could bang out a good bunch of depression images, despite it having happened eighty-odd years ago, and despite never having experienced it.  Shoes worn through, evictions, dole queues, suicides, desperation and despair.

These images have become so dominant, David Potts argues, that they have become a modern myth. 

This is not a dramatically revisionist account that argues that such things never happened and the depression was all sunshine and kittens.  Rather, it's a work of thorough historical craft, informed by around 2,000 interviews.  Potts is an Australian academic, and reading this is like reading a how-to manual for research practice.  Take this example: it is true that during the depression child "malnutrition was widespread and sometimes led to illness and even to death" (26).  Good evidence for the depression as a period of horrendous suffering?  Think again.  In comparison with the 20s, the depression figures are either equivalent or lower. 

This illustrates Potts' key point.  It's easy to pick out a shocking statistic or distressing photograph and claim it as representative.  It makes a compelling political narrative.  It sells papers.  But it doesn't account for typical experience.  In fact, when most of the interviewees referenced a horror story, it turned out to have come from the papers: it wasn't something that had been witnessed or experienced. 

Potts doesn't deny the realities of poverty.  He argues that the depression brought into the national spotlight working class poverty latent through the 20s; it wasn't symptomatic so much as it was being, finally, discussed. 

The blurb promises that the book will "help us reconsider what is most worthwhile in life."  There are plenty of books out there which do the job much more directly (Voluntary Simplicity, or any of The Idler publications, for example), but there is certainly an anti-materialist thread here.  This seems particularly relevant as, after another recession, 'make do and mend' is invoked once again. 

Potts, at pains to present himself as not a political partisan, recounts at one stage a student leaping up in his lecture, berating him for betraying the working class.  In contemporary Britain, a central component of Leftist politics is emphasising the suffering of the poor (this seems almost the current raison d'être of blogs like Left Foot Forward).  The dominance of depression images of suffering suggests that this is a successful strategy.  But maybe it isn't.  In Australia, the depression saw the election of right-wing governments, who held onto power, Potts suggests, because "people found they were doing well enough to want to protect what they had." (335)

Potts' analysis is based on the Australian context.  I have to admit that the depression in Britain is a bit of a blind spot for me.  Do you think his argument might be applicable to Britain, or do you think circumstances there were much different to Australia? 

 

What sort of anthropologist am I?

Writing yesterday's post about how people are gloriously bonkers got me thinking more about what sort of anthropologist I am (and want to be).

Those of you who regularly read this blog (and I adore all three of you) have probably worked out that I'm not exactly a science boffin.  I simply don't conceive of people (and human phenomena) as being ordered, measurable, or even predictable. 

And yet, what does this actually mean for me when I browse the buffet of approaches to the study of people?

I'm a historical anthropologist.  I believe that history is a pretty obvious territory for the study of people.  I'm an anthropologist of Britain.  I believe that Britain is a pretty obvious territory for the study of people. 

But what else am I?  When I study history, and when I study Britain, what are the ideas that I use, the stances I take? 

The truth is, I'm still working it out. 

Back in the days of graduate classes I relished theory and delighted in finding new ideas to shoehorn into relating to not-particularly-relevant things.  If I'd ended up a mediocre Melanesianist I probably wouldn't have departed very much from that great game. 

Nowadays I've not got Benjamin or Althusser or Durkheim or Lacan or even Saint Foucault under my pillow, guiding my thoughts.  Nowadays I am more excited by what Will (on a different post) called "a willingness to spin stories".  Stories like those in Extraordinary Anthropology (which I'll be talking about more in an upcoming post) are valuable not because they advance great big hulking theories, but because they show life in all its messiness and magic. 

So what sort of anthropologist am I?  Well, maybe there is something in James Clifford's recent description of 'the greater humanities'. (And if you're an academic sort who hasn't read that yet, go away and do it now.)  Interpretive.  Realist.  Historical.  Ethico-political.  Yeah, I can see myself fitting in there, not always perfectly, but comfortably.  

Wacky Britain

I was quite taken with Mil's conclusion that modern Britain is wacky. 

Of course, I thought, that's why I'm studying it! 

But where Mil laments Britain's wackiness - the politicking, the internal colonialism - I'm interested in celebrating quite a different wacky Britain. 

In my years as a young player in the study of people, the only solid conclusion I've ever reached is that people are bonkers.

And when I say people, I mean us.  Me.  You.  Bonkers, the glorious lot of us. 

There've been efforts afoot since the Enlightenment to bring people into regimental, predictable line.  What a load of tosh.  I mean, we've been chucking it for hundreds of thousands of years and we still can't work out what to do with our own rubbish; and let's not even start on sexuality.  We're rubbish recruits for any paradise of rationality. 

To some (and probably to some of those still suffering twisted knickers over the AAA's updated statement of purpose) this is A Bad Thing.  They measure and theorise and come up with all manner of grand plans. 

Well, it keeps them off the streets.

It's the innate bonkersness (a technical term; use it in your essays, students) of people that keeps me, as an anthropologist, captured and delighted.  It's what makes me celebrate our diversity, be fascinated by our cultural richness, and want to discover more about us and what we get up to. 

So keep on with your wacky selves, Britain. 

Hello, and we're back

Hello again!

Gosh, it's 2011, innit.

To think that ten years ago I'd chucked university in and gone to stack loo rolls at a supermarket in the very armpit of New Zealand … and now I'm sweltering in a Melbourne summer and doing a PhD on West Yorkshire.

I was going to write a sort of farewell 2010 post (just.like.everyone.else up in your RSS feeds), but I had to leave abruptly for my holiday at home. So I didn't.

I'm not even going to contemplate writing a 2011 predictions post because the rule of thumb seems to be that (unless they come from a C of E blogger and laced with either comedy or tragedy) they are up there with a trip to the dentist.

What I will tell you is that I have uncharacteristically made a new year's resolution. Certain folk have plenty to say about making resolutions achievable and sticking to them.  I figured I'd start small then work up to world domination and/or having Edith Turner to tea later in the decade. So here it is: before this year is out, I will have, for the first time in my life, sat and watched Xanadu.

(That sound starting in the back of your brain is a special gift from Australia: the breathless tones of Olivia Newton-John. It could get physical – physical! - at any moment.)

Now, for those of us who do it proper, today is the last day of Christmas. I'm a sucker for a good carol, and this is the last chance to belt one out. So let's have one, shall we, before normal service resumes again.