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Define social classes for me

  
 
rakehell
02:28 / 23.10.02
There seem to be a couple of threads recently - Social class and ethical position being the latest - which reference social classes, in particular social classes in England.

As the only thing I know about this situation comes from a Fast Show sketch about the middle classes. Could someone give me a definition of the various classes - preferably with examples - and also define those outside the classes - I believe clergy is excluded.

Also, does being a member of a certain class affect peoples lives even now? Accents, where they were born, etc? Is there potential for movement through the classes or are you locked into a particular strata of society?

I'm mainly asking because there really isn't such a phenomenon in Australia. Accents are not that much different - except through ethnicity - and your class is largely defined by your wealth and through that, where you live. It seems as though in England it goes far beyond money
 
 
The Monkey
03:09 / 23.10.02
Hmmm. I've seen class defined socially according to

1) Economics, as in income, net worth, property, and purchasing power, etc.
2) Lineage, as in titular or ascribed status
3) Culture, as in modes of aesthetics, speech, gustation, etc.

both all and in parts. And of course the three aren't entirely extricable from one another, either. A couple of things, such as profession, regionality, and caste also come to mind....
 
 
Jackie Susann
05:40 / 23.10.02
Just piping up to disagree about Australia - there are pretty clear class differences in Aussie accents. I don't know where you from, but in Victoria the differences between prole accents (westies, bogans, etc.) and "proper" English is marked.
 
 
agapanthus
06:45 / 23.10.02
From vague memories of reading Marxist influenced text at university, there were 3 classes: the ruling class, the middle class (bourgeoisie) and working class (proletarian).

The ruling class owned the means of production, the middle class administered it, and the working class provided the labour that turned resources into commodities for sale.

Examples. 1. The Ruling Class.The majority shareholder(s) in a publicly listed company, such as News Ltd - the Murdoch Royal family - controlling the machinery and contracted labour of newspapers, magazines, television stations, cable networks, films, and drawing the profit from these global enterprises.The John Howard coterie, who control the legislative, public bureacratic, military, fiscal and monetary apparatus of the Australian Federal state.
2. The middle class. The millions of agents, delegates, managers and supervisors who administer the profitable running of bureacratic and small to medium private enterprises and bodies. The franchise owner of the local McDonalds, the Quickymart owner/manager down the road, the administrative manager at the arts faculty of a university. The bougeoisie also contain the high-culturally literate: the university educated actor/waiter, the broadsheet reading, gardener who likes the odd art-house cinema experience, and looks down on 'white trash' for their bad taste.
3. The working class. Those who never gain the financial and cultural capital to access the economic or cultural spheres of the seriously wealthy, the high-culturally literate. Those whose labour is paid for cheaply. Whose labour ultimately produce the goods and services that are consumed. The woman who cleans the public toilet you sometimes use; the guy who services and repairs the machine that bottles milk.

Thumbnail and marxist, to be sure. Class is, as Eric Hobsbawm puts it, a relationship. There can be no ruling class without a ruled class. Since the 1960s class, as a defining term of social designation, has fallen by the way. It takes small account of imperial and post-imperial relationships (between Australian and Great British cultures), the structured relationships and meanings of the genders and sexualities, and the issues surrounding religious and ethnic identities.
 
 
Pepsi Max
07:20 / 23.10.02
The UK government's official socio-economic divisions - beware: extremely dull.

Historical view of class:

The upper, lower and middle class allocations are essentially feudual.
The upper classes owned substantial amounts of land on which others worked.
The lower classes worked on that land or had a similar supporting role (e.g. tradesmen).
The middle classes were independently wealthy businessmen, merchants, and small but growing number of 'professionals' such as lawyers, physicians, etc.

Capitialism alters this model as wealth is no longer predicated on ownership of agricultural land. Metaphorically, it becomes 'liquid'. Instead it shifts to ownership of the means of production. Or even the intellectual 'property' in their heads (if you include highly-renumerated professionals such as lawyers, consultants, bankers, etc).

Now arguably, there is still a division of those who own and those who work for those who own - but it's a bit more complicated than it used to be.

Also, does being a member of a certain class affect peoples lives even now? Accents, where they were born, etc? Is there potential for movement through the classes or are you locked into a particular strata of society?

Well, that's a classic question about social mobility. And most people would say that our societies are more mobile than they used to be. Can anyone present evidence to contrary? Of course an interesting spin on this would be: this may be true in Western societies but is the same true globally?

Hmmm. I've seen class defined socially according to

1) Economics, as in income, net worth, property, and purchasing power, etc.
2) Lineage, as in titular or ascribed status
3) Culture, as in modes of aesthetics, speech, gustation, etc.

Now a Marxist would probably say that 3) is a function of 1). [Superstructure vs. base?] And I'd probably agree with certain privisos.
2) is another matter. In societies built around the inheritence of land, then 2) obviously lines up with 1). In more mercantile societies, this relationship still exists but is less stable. In fact the divorce of 1) from 2) is kinda what 'social mobility' means.

Another way to understand class is from an 'intersubjective' rather than 'objective' standpoint. In other words, members of a class must identify themselves as belonging to a class and so must most members of other classes. For example, during the feudal period, a peasant would often think to themselves - "hey, I'm a peasant" and look at an aristocrat - "hey, there's an aristocrat" and the aristocrat would look at the peasant and go - "hey, there's a peasant". And each might have different value judgements about what these specific labels mean, but they'd probably agree on the labels.

N.B. class labels - and also class consciousness and alliegence - are also mapped over other identities - gender, religion, race, national and geographical, sexuality, etc. Increased social mobility would imply that the powervalue of class labels would decrease relative to the others. Is this what has happened?
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
14:10 / 23.10.02
Not strictly relevant, but backing up a point made by several people in passing, that class *signifiers* (and so therefor the way that class as process operates) differ wildly across cultures.

In South Asian cultures example, you can generally do a lot of class pinpointing by surname (it won't always be accurate, but we'll do it anyway. ). Someone's surname can give massive clues to caste, geographical location and subcultures (eg there are Bengali and Punjabi names that are unmistakeable.), religious background, language, rural/urban background, likely political afilliations, even to an extent educational/career prospects.

Number of times my dad for example has heard an Asian name here, in passing, and been able to address them in Bengali (rather then one of the national languages -Hindi or English).
 
  
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