Nostalgia’s New Contexts

This article is grounded in a longitudinal ethnographic investigation of half a dozen working-class neighbourhoods in a large town in northern England. That investigation focused on nostalgia and culturally informed perceptions of change. Reflecting on this ethnographic material, I argue that the contemporary tendency to interpret nostalgia as inherently regressive misunderstands the function of nostalgia and tends to misrepresent the context of its emergence as a key feature of popular political sensemaking in our present era of destabilising change. Drawing upon the words offered by the study’s participants, this article suggests that, given material decline and well-founded reasons to be anxious about the future, it makes sense for these men and women to locate positivity in the past rather than the present or the future. Similarly, it is entirely understandable that they mourn the symbolic practices of their extinct communities. It is equally understandable that they mourn the greater economic stability and inclusivity they experienced during their youth, and the vague sense of hope and positivity most believed once shaped their cultural lives. Their negative evaluation of the world as it is now – a world typified by symbolic incoherence and compulsory individualism – frames their occasional strategic retreat into memories imbued with comfort and familiarity. The article explores the cultural effects and political implications of nostalgia’s new contexts.