Additional materials

Strand B

Relating to Section B10

Language and lifestyle politics

In the book we have focused on political discourse in the traditional meaning of the term. We turn here to a different kind of politics.

In A10 we briefly touched upon a phenomenon in contemporary politics, often described as ‘subpolitics’ (Beck 1999), or ‘lifestyle politics’ (Bennett 2003). We have to remember that the concept of ‘lifestyle’ goes beyond the pursuit of leisure and consumption and that ‘lifestyle politics’ involves the expression of individual rights and an awareness of the social responsibilities linked to a certain lifestyle.

A good illustration from Britain of lifestyle-oriented political engagement is where somebody outside the established political system, such as a celebrity chef, critiques existing forms of social organization. A case in point is chef Jamie Oliver, whose School Dinners TV campaign contributed largely to Government action to improve food in schools and to impose constraints on the junk food industry. This ‘mediatized political activism’ (Talbot 2007), conducted through an online petition and the medium of reality TV, has turned the previously mundane issue of food production and consumption in schools into a debate which has risen to the top of the political agenda in the Labour government.

Oliver’s damning critique of school meals prompted the Labour government of the day to create the ‘School Food Trust’, an independent body charged with putting Oliver’s suggestions into practice. Oliver also managed to secure £280m from the government to rebuild kitchens in some schools, to retrain school cooks (‘dinner ladies’). He even received an award for ‘most inspiring political figure’ of 2005 in the Channel 4 political awards, triumphing in a shortlist that included Tony Blair and Bob Geldof.

One important part of Oliver’s ‘quest’ for healthy food was his successful campaign against the provision of schools with ‘Turkey Twizzlers’ (spiral strips of reconstituted turkey meat). The following quote is taken from a part of the TV series where he visits Peterlee, a northern English town with a particularly bad health record. Sitting on the grass on a Peterlee housing estate, he addresses the viewer thus:

Fucking Turkey Twizzlers I tell you what I’m gonna fucking send a bomb round their factory to shove it right up the jacksie of the MD. If you are watching Mr Turkey Twizzler can you do me a favour and just … [exhales]. It’s very easy for people to say oh you are alright Jamie I bet you have a farmer’s market you are a chef you get all the best stuff yeah so what that’s not what this you know I’m I’m not doing this experiment to because I’m gonna send my kids to state school ‘cos they ain’t gonna go to state school are they let’s be honest right. I am doing this because I want the kids to eat better food I want the kids to be healthier I want them to grow up with better habits I want us to have a fucking cooler, better, cleverer, healthier nation.

In this emotional and passionate plea against Turkey Twizzlers, Oliver acts as a spokesman on behalf of children against an uncaring Government and an exploitative food industry. Unlike many politicians, he comes across as authentic, ordinary, honest (for example in his admission that his children will not go to state school) and ‘cool’, challenging authority in a ‘cheeky chappy’ manner, and expressing indifference to political decorum, expressed not least in his profuse swearing.

School Dinners portrays its ambitious quest for improving pupils’ and, more ambitiously, the nation’s diet largely as a question of lifestyle choices parents should make for themselves and their children. It is imbued with a ‘can-do’ optimism (Palmer 2004) and therefore fits perfectly into an enterprise culture which sees the ‘self as a project’.

As part of his campaign Oliver also organized an outdoor event (‘Hot Dinners for Imps’) in a bid to reintroduce hot meals to Lincolnshire schools. For the event he brought together local schools, parents and their children, pub owners, suppliers and food industry representatives. In the following excerpt, Oliver addresses a large crowd of local food producers, restaurant owners, teachers, parents and children from Lincolnshire. He has picked three people from the crowd, a head teacher, a vegetable grower and a restaurant owner:

Between these three people and the help and commitment of you parents here we can get we can solve this problem. It might only be a short-term problem, but don’t expect anything from the government, nothing’s gonna happen quick and I really think you need hot proper meals in this in this county … We’ve got to get proper food back in this county right and this is the answer: if you lot can get together, bring back that community and pull this off everyone around the country is gonna copy and I promise you if the government sees you lot moving and changing things we’ll find money. Last year they said they had no money, we found 220 million pounds. Right we will find it. Thank you guys, lots of love and thank you for coming.

The notion of community participation and activism (‘if you lot can get together, bring back the community and pull this off ‘), which Oliver is advocating here, is significant. There is the notion that people have to take matters into their own hands (‘don’t expect anything from the government’). Oliver’s use of ‘we’ is central to the process of establishing and maintaining a sense of commonality and inclusion. (‘We’ve got to get proper food back in this county’). At times, it looks like a kind of ‘directive we’ (Fowler 1991), meaning actually ‘you’ (‘we can get we can solve this problem’; ‘We’ve got to get proper food back’). This inclusive use of pronouns are what O’Keefe (2006: 97) calls markers of ‘pseudo-intimacy’, commonly used by politicians to create ‘common ground’ and to build trust with the audience.

The same notion of personal responsibility for change and individual choice has also been an important part of the rhetoric of New Labour in Britain (see Fairclough 2000). It might be argued that far from being an unwelcome critic of the Government, Oliver touts New Labour’s line on food and health being in the hands of the individual citizen-consumer.

Mayr (2009) suggests that School Dinners’ mediatized political activism is a typical form of late modern political engagement, in which ‘effective activist political communication is increasingly characterized by a lifestyle vocabulary anchored in consumer choice and personal display of social responsibility’ (Bennett 2003). Although critical of the Labour government and its apparent neglect of school children, the campaign is ultimately not so different from the Government’s own use of a personalized rhetoric of choice and lifestyle to communicate its political messages to citizens, which now mainly focus on basic policy areas such as health and education. As Furedi remarks, ‘this politicization of individual lifestyle is directly proportional to the depoliticization of public life’ (2006: 2). The preoccupation with lifestyle issues is one of the most significant developments in public policy over the past two decades.