'There used to be streets here, as well.' An analysis of the representation of community in Only Fools and Horses

• Main Author: Bartley, Matthew
• Published: University of Sunderland 2014
• Subjects: 791.45
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.616967

An Analysis of the Representation of Community within Only Fools and Horses is an investigation into a concept that is quite often left unexplored in other academic work or is not investigated as thoroughly as it should. This concept is community, and this PhD will investigate the variety of meanings and values that are bound up with the term "community", how a community is constructed within a TV programme such as Only Fools and Horses and what kinds of issues are raised in this investigation. It starts by investigating the term community, its historical meanings and the various ways by which we understand this term. This investigation takes in a wide range of works from Hoggart and his illustration of industrial workingclass life in the early 20th century, and the community that formed around work places, to the later works of Bauman and Delanty where community is a much more ambiguous concept, where boundaries of community are no longer bound by geographical limits, but by issues of class and ethnicity instead. As well as this, the PhD will also investigate sitcoms, their history and how they have dealt with the concept of community. This will involve looking at other aspects such as class, ethnicity, sexuality and gender and how these have all facto red into the construction of communities in the narrative space of the sitcoms. Finally, this will be specified to just one example, and how the working class world and characters within it are formed into a community, thus pointing out the problems, flaws and processes inherent to community.