Uses of literacy: aspects of working class life with reference to publications and entertainments
- London Penguin Books 1963
- 383 p.
This book is about changes in working-class culture during the last thirty or forty years, in particular as they are being encouraged by mass publications. I imagine that similar results would be gained if some other forms of entertainment, notably the cinema and commercial broadcasting, were used for illustration. I am inclined to think that books on popular culture often lose some of their force by not making sufficiently clear who is meant by 'the people', by inadequately relating their examinations of particular aspects of the people's' life to the wider life they live, and to the attitudes they bring to their entertainments. I have therefore tried to give such a setting, and so far as I could, to describe characteristic working-class relationships and attitudes. Where it is presenting back ground, this book is based to a large extent on personal experience, and does not purport to have the scientifically-tested character of a sociological survey. There is an obvious danger of generalization from limited experience. I have therefore included, chiefly in the notes, some of the findings of sociologists where they seemed necessary, either as support or as qualification of the text. I have also noted one or two instances in which others, with experience similar to mine, think differently.