Introduction: Falling

Nostalgia seems to be everywhere these days. It clearly shapes a broad range of trends in consumer culture. We can see it in the movies and television shows we watch, in the products we buy and of course in the ubiquitous marketing messages that subtly shape our leisure habits. We can also identify the manipulation of its seductive appeal in the realm of politics and especially in the new populist movements that purport to threaten the dour political consensus that continues to bear down so heavily upon ordinary people.

In its original conception, the word ‘nostalgia’ was used to capture the discomfort of homesickness.1 To be in the grip of nostalgia was to be plagued by powerful, sentimental memories and a deep yearning to again experience the various comforts we associate with home. Of course, both intellectuals and ordinary people have understood and used the concept of nostalgia in a variety of ways, and its core meaning has evolved slightly over time. Initially, I saw this book as a response to nostalgia's recent politicisation, a process that has stripped away many of nostalgia's traditional symbolic features before pressing a revised version of the concept into the service of robust political and cultural critique, much of it aimed at the working class, or at least the working class as it is perceived by the progressive neoliberals who now manage many of our core institutions.2 My hope was to move beyond hostile, divisive and inaccurate cultural criticism to address honestly and accurately how, why and to what extent nostalgia informs the political attitudes of the British working class today. However, as my research developed, new themes emerged to carry my analysis in a slightly different direction.