And which do you prefer if you're going for an Indian?

D: Um, I suppose I prefer the former [Anglo Asian] because, um - it's nearer and because it's, say a restaurant within a local, it's still predominantly, or largely, a

white area. I feel a personal sense of safety, and that's partly because of my prejudices that I will still rather be with the same people who have the, let's face it, the same

colour and the same parents as me, and partly because, um - Brick Lane is a dicky area.

(Dorian, session 3, emphasis added)

Here notions of the authentic become more complicated. Though Brick Lane may in one sense offer the "more real" experience of difference, it is a difference that threatens to overwhelm. As notions of authenticity are understood less in terms of cultural specificity (Dorian continues to feel no compulsion to find out where the staff of the restaurant or the area's residents 'really' "come from", for example) than in relation to issues of colour (and class), it is in fact the "watered down" version of the exotic that Dorian prefers. Any desire for difference is thus caught up within a wider set of cultural tastes. Even within Stoke Newington it would clearly be possible for Dorian to find the sort of restaurant that for Paul was representative of a true "little India", right down to the tigers on the wall and the choice of music. One suspects, however, that for Dorian such a restaurant would not only be inauthentic, but unacceptable. Thus, it is not only

* At the time of our meetings Sandringham Road was infamous within Hackney for its crack dealing. Amanda's understandings thus fit well with traditional understandings of the exotic that define it as that (always delimited) flirtation with a dangerous Other (hooks, 1992; Short, 1991). Just as the appeal of the "gristly bits" may lay partly in her revulsion (they are, in other words, attractive because they are also slightly repellant) the attraction of Sandringham Road may be that Amanda can choose when, and whether, she wishes to enter this clearly defined zone of Otherness. Cf Keith's (1993) account of Sandringham Road as a racialised 'symbolic location'.

that in the Anglo Asian the experience of difference is made safer through the presence of other white diners, but that the class of those diners, and the restaurant's decor, are also more acceptable. In other words, though Dorian may wish to consume the Other, this consumption is negotiated within the demands of taste, class and colour.^ Most importantly it is only enjoyable when rendered safe, and this safety is always possible for those able to define the level of authenticity that they desire.

Before moving on, to see how these issues are played out in people's overseas travel experiences, we can make a number of conclusions. In direct contrast to Paul and Pat, the new cultural class respondents have generally welcomed the proliferation of exotic food. At face value this is because these foods offer them the chance to display their liberal politics and to celebrate the blurring of social distinctions articulated by a new postmodern aesthetic. At a deeper level, however, their consumption practices reveal that these foods may only form part of a quite instrumental cultural capital. In the first place the conspicuous consumption of these foods allows them to distance themselves from those less knowledgable, less wealthy, and less 'politically correct' than themselves. On the other, these practices also reveal that, far from working to challenge a set of traditional cultural oppositions (between the familiar and the different, the foreign and the domestic, for example) the marketing and consumption of these foods often in fact upholds these distinctions.

This is especially the case as some members of the new cultural class start to compete against each other to see who can find the most exotic or most authentic new food. This process can be understood as emerging out of two needs. First, to continue a process of social distinction. Secondly, to gain access to that more 'natural', more authentic experience that people desire. This process tends to produce a quite exclusionary continuum of authentic exoticism constructed around a racialised understanding of authenticity, though this is by no means inevitable (the relative authenticity of pizza, for example, is defined in quite different ways than the relative authenticity of Red Snapper).

Finally, this continuum has the ironic effect of enabling consumers to consciously choose the level of authenticity that they desire and this may often be done according to a wider set of racist understandings. But, the new cultural class respondents are also quite reflexive. Dorian, for example, was plainly aware of the racist nature of her practices and an awareness of this reflexivity is useful because it moves us away from

positioning these processes as inevitably racist (cf hooks, 1991), and points us instead to an understanding of the practical politics these consumption practices articulate. The inequality of this new consumption ethic is not that as a white person to eat African food is necessarily to construct that food as somehow 'more authentic' than an 'English' meal of fish and chips and thereby to construct a whole series of exclusionary understandings. Rather, it is simply to recognize that the ability to choose what one eats, and what one associates with that food, is the product of one's class and colour and it is this that necessarily defines an unequal politics of consumption.

In part two I shall show how this rather detailed analysis of authenticity in turn allows us a more sophisticated understanding of people's overseas travel experiences. In particular I shall show how, having worked around a continuum of authenticity at home, the new cultural class respondents use that continuum always to gain access to that experience of authenticity that they desire and that promises refuge from the inauthenticity, and insecurity, of life at home. In this sense, whilst this first section has outlined the politics of globalisation, the second is designed to return to the experiences of time-space compression in more detail and, in particular, to issues of time. But, to begin that section I want first to turn to the experiences of the working class respondents, to see how they seek to recover that more comforting sense of time they desire and that sense of cultural hegemony they fear has been lost with the appearance of these foods at home.

6.4 All around the world

The recent expansion in (relatively) cheap overseas travel is one of the clearest symbols of time-space compression. The advent of the charter flight and package tour means that the experience of the foreign holiday is no longer restricted to the wealthy. These developments have the effect of complicating any simple sociology of time-space compression based around issues of economic empowerment. For example, though every year Paul and his family still go on holiday to the south-east coast of England, rather than to Spain, both Paul and Pat have holidayed abroad. In fact of all the respondents except for George it was Pat who had travelled most extensively. Foreign travel could be described as her passion and, cashing in on some life insurance, she has recently travelled to North America, Egypt, and most of Europe, not by charter, but on Concorde. Neither the remarkable pace of these developments (and the ramifications they have for traditional class relations), nor the irony of transport technologies that can now get one from London to Cairo in less time than it takes to get up the M l, have been lost on Pat;