Exploring Diversity SEMINAR SERIES

Prof. Beverley Skeggs

“New Moral Economies on Reality TV”

Drawing on research from the ESRC project ‘The Making of Class and Self through Televised Ethical Scenarios’ Skeggs examine the increased opening out of subjects through Reality Television, of how the evaluation of practices (emoting, performing, speaking, telling) establishes value in the person, displays embodied morality, and divides people into categories of good and bad. She explore how this opening out of intimacy is paralleled by other structures (such as law and social policy) by which power is re-organised to deal with social changes (such as increased divorce, increased management of dispersed family, increased infidelity) and how order is maintained through the opening out of personhood and its reorganisation across a range of site, of which Reality TV is the least subtle and most visual, but importantly engages the audience in the re-organisation and attribution of value.

The process of opening out subjects is not just a matter of governance but produces economies of affect and actual economic profit based upon the exchange value of intimacy and emotion, made visible through showing, telling and dramatisation on TV.

Beverley Skeggs is professor of sociology at Goldsmiths University of London, UK. Skeggs is interested in the relationship between the most intimate and the most structural, between who we think we are, and global capitalism and the processes by which we become (the doing of being). Her book Class, Self, Culture (London: Routledge 2004) explores these interests by examining how class is produced across a range of sites. The central concern of Skeggs is with power, with who has value, with who is seen to be worthy and unworthy and with how groups are positioned and position themselves in relation to the social categories available to them.More information..