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New research explores what it means to be northern
The special edition is edited by Professor Karl Spracklen, Gabby Riches and Spencer Swain and tackles the idea of northernness, both in England and Europe, exploring it in relation to space, leisure, gender, race and class.
In his paper, Professor Karl Spracklen draws on his own experience of being northern, developing his own theory of northernness beginning with the Romans, Vikings and Robin Hood through to the romantic poets and authors such as Wordsworth and the Brontës through to the present day. He argues that the idea of northernness is an invention of ours, with an imagined community and invented traditions, which northerners want to prevail.
Professor Spracklen explained: “My research has focused on three forms of popular culture: rugby league – which I argue has a northernness imposed upon it by those in the south of England who support rugby union; art and poetry; and television – all capturing some magical truth about the hills, valleys, mills and farms supposedly unique to the north. I use these to demonstrate how northernness is an invention of northerners, but shaped by the constraints placed on them by people with cultural power in the south.”
Continuing the theme of sport, Dr Thomas Fletcher and Spencer Swain at Leeds Beckett University analyse the idea of Yorkshireness, arguing that, like northernness, it is a product of invented cultural traditions, assumptions and memories which is maintained and encouraged through the sport of cricket.
Looking at popular culture in specific English towns, Dr Robert Snape from the University of Bolton, and Dr Katie Milestone from Manchester Metropolitan University, base their research in their own towns’ histories. Dr Snape examines the everyday leisure and northernness in Bolton during the 1930s, focusing on the cotton factories in Bolton and arguing that northern working-class people were active in creating their own everyday leisure activities and networks which contributed to a sense of cultural identity unique to Bolton.
Dr Milestone’s article examines the emergence of Manchester’s creative industries in the 1980s onwards which have been associated with music and club culture which prioritise ‘laddishness’ and masculine interests, and creating a gendered division in the industry.
Focusing on the arts, Dr Alison Peirse at the University of York considers the importance of place-related research by examining the playwright Andrea Dunbar, whose best-known films, The Arbor and Rita, Sue and Bob Too were predominantly set in Bradford. Dr Peirse argues that the Northern working classes are frequently depicted from the perspective of a middle-class outsider where Northerners are shown to be passive, victimised or self-sacrificing heroic figures. Dunbar’s films rejected this idea, exposing the cultural reality as working-class people were allowed to speak for themselves.
Similarly, Dr Kristyn Gorton, also of the University of York, looks at the portrayal of Northern working-class women in the cultural industry, focusing on Sally Wainwright’s television drama, Happy Valley. Wainwright writes from the position of a Northern working-class woman, challenging the norms by placing women, physically and emotionally, at the centre of her social drama.
Addressing the idea of northernness in Europe, Dr Juha Ridanpää of the University of Oulu in Finland, examines how northern identities are performed and represented in heavy rock and rap music in Finland. Dr Ridanpää explores the way in which northern cultural life in Finland has been restricted to fulfil the expectations and nationalist requirements of the south, demonstrating how contemporary ethnic music is used as a form as social resistance.