I found the passages about the unspoken sorting of kids into going to uni and not going to uni really spot on to my own experience.
I do wish he extrapolated on his points around tenants unions as I think they're a very interesting faultline between a lot of these classes (and sub classes) converge in a shared material goal sometimes
Yeah the schooling chapter was so interesting and rang really true to my experience too, especially the way it becomes an early site of petty bourgeois/working class rivalry and distinction. We all got sold such a lie damn it! What would you have liked to see him go into re: tenant unions?
My own experience working in the tenants unions finds that its a natural place for new petty bourgeois/working class to work towards a genuinely shared political goal in housing but there is large cultural gap between the two, both ways.
If memory serves he says there were really well intentioned and hard working activists in ACORN but the class divide inherent to tenants organising is a big problem which I agree with but I think that this class divide makes tenants unions a really good place to bridge differences through a shared material political goal. The new petty bourgeois/working class are so rarely in each others wheelhouses due to the death of community and a local tenants union makes these two groups, with shared interests, not be silo'd off from one another. A good example was a social housing unit of old working class women being fobbed off by the council in their dispute came to a union meeting where a load of new petty bourgeois, awkwardly socially at first, pulled the stops out to help which allowed both sides to build social bridges while working towards a shared goal. It was beautiful to see.
I wish he talked more about his thoughts to get my teeth into cause I think it would be really interesting, I know for a fact that this book is discussed a lot in the tenants union movement because we all share a similar analysis. Not that I'm annoyed he didn't or anything, if anything I just want more of his analysis in a place I think lends itself well to his subject!
Yeah the question of how to organise well is a really knotty and interesting one isn't it, especially overcoming those cultural gaps--even being aware of them. Getting a single working class person to walk through the doors of your new PB org is a battle sometimes, and little things like the hours you meet and whether anyone with kids or irregular shifts could ever make that time all add up. That example of yours is really cool!
Evans says this in the book about Americans! Interestingly though my NZ friend living in NYC says it's becoming really common for Americans to fudge working class identity the same way Brits (and Kiwis) do, which tracks with what I noticed working overseas as well, so there might be a bit of a shift there
I view the non-boss definition is an invitation to solidarity. Most of us who aren't an owner of a business are being ripped off, paid less than the value of our work products.
And it's important that social class and economic class are understood as separate, intersecting categories.
I haven't read the book yet but those are a couple of points I'd carry with me when I do.
I think a thing which anglophone people outside the UK sometimes misunderstand about class is that it's correlated to money, sure, but that’s not how the lines are really defined. It's much more about cultural values, schooling, language and accent and so on (whereas I think in the USA, for example, it literally just means how much you/your family earn). David Beckham, for example, is worth a couple of hundred million quid, and he's still decidedly working class. An aristocrat who can only afford to heat one room of their ancestral castle is still upper class (obviously!)
There was actually a really interesting example of this in the Beckham documentary on Netflix a few months ago – that whole viral bit where Victoria Beckham says she grew up in a working-class family, and David pokes his head round the door and ribs her for the fact her dad owned a Rolls-Royce when she was a kid. But they're not mutually exclusive!
You might also find the idea of "U and non-U English" quite funny, don't know if you ever came across that? A good way to discern someone's class in the UK is to ask them what they call the long chair that you would sit on to watch TV.
Incidentally, I have this book on my shelf to read but haven't got round to it yet. Really glad to hear it's good, and also really glad that it's nuanced and written, by the sounds of it, in good faith. Cheers for the review!
You're welcome! Definitely read it because the author discusses how in the UK class is understood as a cultural phenomenon in exactly the way you lay out here, but he argues against that understanding v convincingly imo. Maybe Posh Spice was petty bourgeoisie!
I’m petty bourgeoise & my partner is upper-middle class, & his parents upper class. Does that make me sort of posh by osmosis? Maybe?! It is complicated. :)
I enjoyed the book SERIOUS MONEY: walking plutocratic London. It observes the complexity of women’s roles when they cross over with class roles. Esp in family life. It also observes how much of class is tied up in access to inheritance and bricks and mortar, property. The people who are forced to rent, vs. the people who can easily pay off a mortgage, & with the landlords on an even higher plane. & those who invest other people’s money, much higher still.
Motherhood is almost always underpaid or totally unpaid (with a miniature boss) so that role tends to be a leveller, but there’s still a subtle hierarchy.
I’d never send my daughters to private school on principle but even if I wanted to it would be too expensive, so I think that defines another hefty class divide in the U.K.
My history professor at Uni was firm in stating that the working class includes absolutely anybody who is *working* for a boss & is not a boss themselves. That’s quite diverse. But we do love to categorise ourselves.
You'd probably enjoy A Nation of Shopkeepers then because it goes into these finer areas (except the interplay with gender, which I agree is really fascinating)--he argues against the "you're working class if you have a boss" idea and there's a good chapter on housing and how home ownership doesn't define your class position but definitely complicates it.
One thing I didn't say which was quite an important point in the book is that your class isn't a moral category. If people understood that a lot of the defensiveness and posturing could probably be removed from the conversation
Yes, it’s an economic category. The strongest suspicion flows from the Haves towards the Have-Yachts, as Knowles quips. But in fact there is no moral code unique to any one class.
I recall a conversation with a very rich British man, nice, posh, my boss, in which he ostentatiously referred to the Telegraph as the Torygraph, and even though young and green and new to Britain I knew exactly what he was doing in terms of signalling to me his correct social credentials. In later years, I noticed the same impulse among this kind of person to mention Brexit with disdain upon moments of meeting someone for the first time.
If you depend on a paycheck to survive for most of your life, you’re working class. If you live on dividends or rental income from properties you didn’t work to buy, then you’re not working class.
That’s incorrect. The criteria is that if you own a home, a higher education degree, and/or have disposable income, you are technically middle class. If you have all 3 you are absolutely middle class.
I found the passages about the unspoken sorting of kids into going to uni and not going to uni really spot on to my own experience.
I do wish he extrapolated on his points around tenants unions as I think they're a very interesting faultline between a lot of these classes (and sub classes) converge in a shared material goal sometimes
Yeah the schooling chapter was so interesting and rang really true to my experience too, especially the way it becomes an early site of petty bourgeois/working class rivalry and distinction. We all got sold such a lie damn it! What would you have liked to see him go into re: tenant unions?
My own experience working in the tenants unions finds that its a natural place for new petty bourgeois/working class to work towards a genuinely shared political goal in housing but there is large cultural gap between the two, both ways.
If memory serves he says there were really well intentioned and hard working activists in ACORN but the class divide inherent to tenants organising is a big problem which I agree with but I think that this class divide makes tenants unions a really good place to bridge differences through a shared material political goal. The new petty bourgeois/working class are so rarely in each others wheelhouses due to the death of community and a local tenants union makes these two groups, with shared interests, not be silo'd off from one another. A good example was a social housing unit of old working class women being fobbed off by the council in their dispute came to a union meeting where a load of new petty bourgeois, awkwardly socially at first, pulled the stops out to help which allowed both sides to build social bridges while working towards a shared goal. It was beautiful to see.
I wish he talked more about his thoughts to get my teeth into cause I think it would be really interesting, I know for a fact that this book is discussed a lot in the tenants union movement because we all share a similar analysis. Not that I'm annoyed he didn't or anything, if anything I just want more of his analysis in a place I think lends itself well to his subject!
Yeah the question of how to organise well is a really knotty and interesting one isn't it, especially overcoming those cultural gaps--even being aware of them. Getting a single working class person to walk through the doors of your new PB org is a battle sometimes, and little things like the hours you meet and whether anyone with kids or irregular shifts could ever make that time all add up. That example of yours is really cool!
Must be a Brit thing!
Americans don’t like to admit they’re working class. Everyone claims to be middle class.
I do identify as working class. I’m certainly paid little enough.
Evans says this in the book about Americans! Interestingly though my NZ friend living in NYC says it's becoming really common for Americans to fudge working class identity the same way Brits (and Kiwis) do, which tracks with what I noticed working overseas as well, so there might be a bit of a shift there
I view the non-boss definition is an invitation to solidarity. Most of us who aren't an owner of a business are being ripped off, paid less than the value of our work products.
And it's important that social class and economic class are understood as separate, intersecting categories.
I haven't read the book yet but those are a couple of points I'd carry with me when I do.
The megacorps are very pleased with leftists these days.
You'll find the book very sensible on both these points!
I think a thing which anglophone people outside the UK sometimes misunderstand about class is that it's correlated to money, sure, but that’s not how the lines are really defined. It's much more about cultural values, schooling, language and accent and so on (whereas I think in the USA, for example, it literally just means how much you/your family earn). David Beckham, for example, is worth a couple of hundred million quid, and he's still decidedly working class. An aristocrat who can only afford to heat one room of their ancestral castle is still upper class (obviously!)
There was actually a really interesting example of this in the Beckham documentary on Netflix a few months ago – that whole viral bit where Victoria Beckham says she grew up in a working-class family, and David pokes his head round the door and ribs her for the fact her dad owned a Rolls-Royce when she was a kid. But they're not mutually exclusive!
You might also find the idea of "U and non-U English" quite funny, don't know if you ever came across that? A good way to discern someone's class in the UK is to ask them what they call the long chair that you would sit on to watch TV.
Incidentally, I have this book on my shelf to read but haven't got round to it yet. Really glad to hear it's good, and also really glad that it's nuanced and written, by the sounds of it, in good faith. Cheers for the review!
You're welcome! Definitely read it because the author discusses how in the UK class is understood as a cultural phenomenon in exactly the way you lay out here, but he argues against that understanding v convincingly imo. Maybe Posh Spice was petty bourgeoisie!
I’m petty bourgeoise & my partner is upper-middle class, & his parents upper class. Does that make me sort of posh by osmosis? Maybe?! It is complicated. :)
I enjoyed the book SERIOUS MONEY: walking plutocratic London. It observes the complexity of women’s roles when they cross over with class roles. Esp in family life. It also observes how much of class is tied up in access to inheritance and bricks and mortar, property. The people who are forced to rent, vs. the people who can easily pay off a mortgage, & with the landlords on an even higher plane. & those who invest other people’s money, much higher still.
Motherhood is almost always underpaid or totally unpaid (with a miniature boss) so that role tends to be a leveller, but there’s still a subtle hierarchy.
I’d never send my daughters to private school on principle but even if I wanted to it would be too expensive, so I think that defines another hefty class divide in the U.K.
My history professor at Uni was firm in stating that the working class includes absolutely anybody who is *working* for a boss & is not a boss themselves. That’s quite diverse. But we do love to categorise ourselves.
You'd probably enjoy A Nation of Shopkeepers then because it goes into these finer areas (except the interplay with gender, which I agree is really fascinating)--he argues against the "you're working class if you have a boss" idea and there's a good chapter on housing and how home ownership doesn't define your class position but definitely complicates it.
One thing I didn't say which was quite an important point in the book is that your class isn't a moral category. If people understood that a lot of the defensiveness and posturing could probably be removed from the conversation
Yes, it’s an economic category. The strongest suspicion flows from the Haves towards the Have-Yachts, as Knowles quips. But in fact there is no moral code unique to any one class.
I recall a conversation with a very rich British man, nice, posh, my boss, in which he ostentatiously referred to the Telegraph as the Torygraph, and even though young and green and new to Britain I knew exactly what he was doing in terms of signalling to me his correct social credentials. In later years, I noticed the same impulse among this kind of person to mention Brexit with disdain upon moments of meeting someone for the first time.
If you depend on a paycheck to survive for most of your life, you’re working class. If you live on dividends or rental income from properties you didn’t work to buy, then you’re not working class.
That’s incorrect. The criteria is that if you own a home, a higher education degree, and/or have disposable income, you are technically middle class. If you have all 3 you are absolutely middle class.