Culture and the Middle Classes

Simon Stewart

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317155881
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book is a sociological study of a societal grouping that has the popular title 'middle class'. It argues that it is more precise to describe the middle classes as dominant groupings, and the book draws upon a wide range of characters from such groupings. In a detailed analysis of cultural practices, those making an appearance include omnivores, carnivores, herbivores, the middle-brow, traditional culture vultures, middle class plunderers, the urban arts eclectic and the English gentleman. There is a particular focus on those expressing the 'silver disposition'; predominantly affluent, middle-aged and white, with a taste for conspicuous consumption and established cultural forms. The book brings together a range of disparate sources on the middle classes and offers a sustained engagement with the concept of 'culture'. It illustrates the extent to which social groups utilize the various assets at their disposal and seek to maintain the legitimacy of their cultural practices. The findings emphasise the continuing link between class and taste. Culture and the Middle Classes will be of interest to those working in the fields of class and culture across a range of disciplines, including sociology, cultural studies, social theory, media studies and cultural anthropology.

Chapter 1
The Middle Classes: A Cohesive Middle Class?

In this chapter I argue that there is little evidence that could back up the idea of a cohesive, self-defining middle-class grouping, and equally misleading is the idea that any such group is in decline. Much of the literature on the decline of the significance of the middle classes misses the fact that there has never been a cohesive middle-class identity pervading British society. It has never been a mobilized group. Although some claims have been made to highlight the communal and collective aspects of certain working-class lifestyles at various stages of British history, there is little evidence to suggest that the middle class’ identity has declined because it has never really existed as a form of class consciousness. There is no high point from which it has fallen, and there has been no process of amelioration. Narratives of decline are misleading because there has never been a cohesive middle-class identity. What members of the so-called middle classes have in common it is the fact that their life patterns are contemporary manifestations of bourgeois individualism, shifting and mutating in line with political, economic and social trends. As I argue in Chapter 2, the middle classes are those more likely to be favourably situated in relation to societal resources.

Despite lack of coherence in middle-class groupings, the concept of class is pertinent in the popular imagination, and although it is a relatively abstract concept, it is not something which people regard as confined to academic debate. The notion of middle classes is particularly salient in popular discourse, and this is exemplified in the frequency with which stories regarding middle classes appear in the British press. As Beverley Skeggs (2004, p. 46) observes, there has been a curious upsurge in the popular usage of the language of social class, for example, by people operating in commercial environments just as there has been a relative decline in the discussion of class in the higher echelons of the academy. In the last few years, there has been no shortage of tabloid and broadsheet coverage of aspects of middle-class life, whether relating problems associated with excessive red wine consumption in the home or revealing stories of middle-class deviations from respectability (students becoming strippers to pay their university fees, etc.).

Middle Classes Consciousness

If it is the case that the term ‘middle classes’ is in popular usage, to what extent do people define themselves as ‘middle class’? In the following analysis of recent research, my findings suggest that there is very little evidence to suggest that there is a cohesive sense of middle-class identity in contemporary British society. My findings in this chapter are based on an analysis of a recent report on the middle classes, and on an assessment of arguments made by prominent sociologists for whom the middle classes have been an object of study, and throughout the book, I utilize literature written by the likes of Mike Savage, Beverley Skeggs, Loic Wacquant, Simon Gunn, Rachel Bell and Pierre Bourdieu. Academic literature specifically concerning the contemporary middle classes is relatively scarce, although the range of literature on social class is vast. The focus of this project restricts me from engaging in great detail with social class more generally (see Bradley, 1996; Savage, 2000; Crompton, 2008; Edgell, 1993), but I offer a sustained engagement with key scholarly work on the middle classes.

The Middle Britain report carried out by the Future Foundation was widely reported in the British broadsheets in 2006 and the most headline-grabbing aspect of the research picked up on in newspapers such as the Times was the finding that 43 per cent of the survey participants define themselves as middle class. The Future Foundation’s results are based on analysis of British Household Panel Study (BHPS) and British Election Survey data (BES), and the results of what they term a ‘nationally representative’ survey of 1,000 UK adults carried out by the Institute of Commercial Management from 11th to 13th March 2006 (Future Foundation, 2006, p. 3).1 The researchers were influenced by the British Election Survey’s tactic of getting respondents to self-define their social class status. In 2005, the BES asked respondents whether they thought of themselves as a member of a particular class, and as a consequence, 56 per cent responded in the negative. However, what caught the eye of the Future Foundation researchers was the fact that of those who spontaneously identified themselves as members of a class, 38.5 per cent called themselves middle class. This percentage from 2005 is higher than the 30 per cent that identified as middle class in 1966. The Future Foundation (2006, p. 3) opted to cast aside the possibility of answering in the negative, and posed the question to its 1,000 respondents: ‘Would you consider yourself working class, middle class or upper class’? The reason behind this was to bypass reticence to discuss class:

On comparing the results from the BES, the BHPS and our latest research for Liverpool Victoria, it would appear that around a quarter (26%) of UK adults might be called ‘middle class but reluctant to admit it’ (2006, p. 5).

Of course, as well as bypassing reticence, the survey may have pushed people into categories not sufficiently nuanced to account for the complexities of class in contemporary society. Nevertheless, the directness of this question yielded some interesting results: 43 per cent of respondents defined themselves as middle class, compared to 53 per cent who see themselves as working class. These figures approximate to figures derived from a similar question posed in the BHPS which were 42 per cent (middle class) and 46 per cent (working class) (Future Foundation, 2006, p. 5). The various data gathered therefore seem to point to a slender working class majority in contemporary British society. However, the authors of the report predict that on the basis of these findings, more people will consider themselves middle class than working class by the year 2020 (2006, p. 5). These findings were much publicized in the broadsheet press, typified by an article by Alexandra Frean which carried the headline ‘We’re all middle class now as social barriers fall away’ (Frean, 2006). This sentiment is particularly noticeable in the figures for 18–24 year olds which show that 48 per cent consider themselves to be middle class compared to 45 per cent working class.

Do these findings demonstrate that contemporary Britain is increasingly populated by middle-class citizens? I would suggest not. There are a number of reasons why it is problematic to draw such conclusions from the findings. First, it was carried out during a time of economic prosperity during which people were more likely to have felt prosperous and declared themselves middle class. The authors of the report (Future Foundation, 2006, p. 5) refer to ‘our much more affluent times’, and write that ‘since the 1970s, we have seen relentless increases in affluence’ and their telephone surveys were carried out before the economic downturn took hold in 2008. Second, as established above, the respondents were given a limited set of options to choose from (working class, middle class, upper class) and therefore the rather profound differences between (for example) upper middle class and lower middle class are obfuscated, and those who genuinely believe that they are not members of a class have no option to choose that reflects their opinion. Third, with the exception of the awareness that the authors draw to some of the mismatches people make – bearing in mind their incomes, occupations and/or savings – in affiliating themselves with a certain class, the report does not critically engage with social class as a concept to a sufficient degree. Perhaps this is because the Future Foundation is primarily concerned with commercial research, and its findings are geared more towards business solutions than to social science, as the following promotional material demonstrates:

Whether it’s to gain an understanding of how and why your consumers are changing, to examine the social trends affecting your market, or to develop a new product or service we can tailor our research to meet your needs (2009).

The findings must, therefore, be treated with caution. This does not mean, however, that they are worthless. Interestingly, the report does read the self-declared class identities against other factors, and this yields some fruitful conclusions. For example, one of the most interesting of such conclusions is the finding that a key differential between the self-identified middle and working classes is the greater likelihood of the former having a more substantial amount of what the authors of the report term ‘quiet money’. This encompasses money the respondents have invested in savings, shares and property. According to BHPS figures, the homes of the middle classes are worth 70 per cent more than those of the working classes (Future Foundation, 2006, p. 16), and more significantly, according to the Future Foundation report, ‘the key financial differentiator of the classes is savings and investments’ (2006, p. 17). Crucially, the self-defined middle-class respondents have twice as much in savings accounts and almost three times the amount in stocks, shares and other investments, and as a result, it can be observed that these differences outstrip income differentials (2006, p. 17).

Another pertinent finding is that although the authors argue that we are increasingly becoming a ‘middle-class society’, there is a certain reluctance to affiliate oneself with a class. This is highlighted above in the fact that in the BES, 56 per cent of respondents answered that they didn’t think of themselves as members of a particular class. The Future Foundation researchers postulate several reasons for the fact that ‘many of us just don’t want to accept a “middle class” label’ or are confused regarding our class status. The authors of the report term this ‘class confusion, or, the rise of the muddle classes’. One explanation put forward is that we live in what the researchers describe as ‘an era of mass affluence’, meaning that rising levels of disposable income and affluence across Britain are ‘constantly putting the skids under the association of class with a particular standard of living’ (Future Foundation, 2006, p. 6). Again, it should be made clear that the research was carried out in 2005 during a period of economic prosperity in Britain. However, even taking that into consideration, it should be noted that this ‘mass affluence’ in relation to incomes doesn’t stretch to all sectors of British society. A report carried out by Brewer et al. for the Institute for Fiscal Studies (2005) highlights the fact that average household income figures (such as those used by the Future Foundation) are highly skewed. 64 per cent of individuals have household incomes below the national average, and the figure of mean national average household income of £408 per week is distorted by extreme highs and lows in income. For example, 1.4 million individuals (out of 57 million) have incomes above £1,100 per week whereas 500,000 individuals earn between zero and £10 per week (Brewer, Goodman, Shaw and Shephard, 2005, p. 9). Brewer et al. use the Gini coefficient to measure income inequality: this measure condenses the entire income distribution into a single number between zero and one, adjusted for household size and composition; a value of zero represents the absence of inequality, and the higher the number, the greater the degree of inequality (at its most extreme, the value of one would mean that one individual has command over the entire income in the economy). The report finds that the Gini coefficient rose in the late 1990s before falling in 2003–2004 to a slightly higher level than it was in 1997–1998 (0.33) at around 0.34 (Brewer, Goodman, Shaw and Shephard, 2005, p. 20). Inequality in Britain, the report therefore concludes, remains at historically high levels:

Reflecting on the more recent experience, it appears that the relatively large redistributive programme introduced by Labour since 1997 has only been sufficient to just about halt the growth in inequality, and certainly not to reduce it (Brewer, Goodman, Shaw and Shephard, 2005, p. 21).

A further reason for the existence of muddle classes provided by the Future Foundation is that the wealthiest individuals (the top 10 per cent who earn more than half the total wealth in Britain) prefer not to call themselves upper class – perhaps because of the conspicuousness of this identity – and therefore misidentify themselves as middle class despite their vast assets. Another explanatory factor provided in the report is that there has been a move towards individualism and the ethics of social mobility. Apparently, we believe in the ethics of social mobility:

In the 21st century we believe in the possibility of social mobility more than ever before. Not only do we believe that social mobility is possible, in our meritocratic society we believe it is a measure of a person’s intelligence, strength of character, or moral worth. This may explain the strangely ‘skewed’ nature of class identification – the class we place ourselves in may be intended as a statement of origins – and our current level of material wealth, cultural capital, etc., as an expression of what we ourselves have earned – of how far we have come. Hence, many of us will report class status ‘below’ that of our current circumstances. Nobody wants to be seen as privileged anymore (Future Foundation, 2006, p. 7).

The report suggests that people believe in meritocracy and social mobility, and attribute their affluence to personal attributes and hard work rather than the benefits of membership of a particular class background. As I will argue in the following section, such a belief is an inaccurate reflection of prevailing socioeconomic conditions.

The Myth of Meritocracy

The Middle Britain report suggests that we are becoming more middle class as a result of attitudes to social mobility and meritocracy. It is worth demonstrating that such attitudes are based on a misunderstanding of recent socio-economic trends, and as Fiona Devine argues, although Britain enjoyed high rates of absolute social mobility in the twentieth century, ‘people from middle-class backgrounds still had a far greater chance of getting middle-class jobs than their working-class counterparts’ (Devine, 2005, p. 147). Arguments regarding meritocracy and social mobility are not new, whether in popular or academic discourse. Writing in the middle part of the last century, Kinsley Davis and Wilbert E. Moore (1944) argue that society is a ‘functioning mechanism’ whereby differential rewards are offered, as part of a hierarchical system of positions, as inducements to ensure that the best positions are filled by the most able persons. Social inequality is something that has developed ‘unconsciously’ rather than as a result of knowing exploitation. As part of this model, one can presume that ‘middle class’ job positions are given prestige on the basis of the fact that they are of importance to society (this is a matter of relative significance) and because they require the greatest amount of talent or training. The assumption is thus made that those best qualified and capable for such positions will be the most likely to attain them. This is a vision of a society characterized by inequality and competition, but nevertheless a meritocratic society. The middle classes in such a society, those holding socially prestigious and economically rewarding positions, are likely to be those who have trained for a long period of time or those with exceptional levels of talent. They will have been attracted to the jobs by the prestige that such a position afford, by ample leisure time and high levels of remuneration.2

This perspective has been criticized by sociologists for its foregrounding of a consensual model of stratification, as opposed to one that takes into account structural inequalities of opportunity (see, for example, Crompton, 2008). Nevertheless, the model of reward put forward by Davis and Moore is broadly shared by many contemporary thinkers on class outside of the discipline of sociology. Historian Lawrence James (2008) attributes the prominence of middle classes successes to their enterprise, perseverance and moral character. For James (2008, p. 1), it was the middle class that stamped its moral character on Britain at the time of industrialization. This class (in the main, James understands it in the singular) governed because it was educated and enlightened, and in Victorian times, its ability to succeed was heightened by its flexibility and ability to remain forward looking. It is precisely this disposition which ensures that the middle class is still in the ascent in contemporary society (and probably why it is that the middle classes are more likely to attain middle class jobs). According to James:

... the middle classes represent the enterprise and genius of the nation; they are the people who recognize what needs to be done and set about achieving it. Throughout its history, the middle class has believe in the rights of the individual to think and do as he wished (within the bound of reason and law) and in government by consent. The middle classes insist that the state should protect them and their property and wish everyone to be free to ascend as far as their talents allow, and for this reason they have an enormous faith in education. They want their children to get on and will do all in their power to assist them (James, 2008, p.593).

In a similar fashion to Davis and Moore’s work on stratification, James provides a model of class ascendency that incorporates what Rosemary Crompton (2008, p. 13) terms ‘a moral justification of economic inequality which has been commonplace since the advent of economic liberalism: that is, in a competitive market society, it is the most talented and ambitious – in short, the best – that get to the top, and therefore take the greater part of societies’ rewards’. James’s book was published in 2008 and demonstrates that arguments regarding meritocracy are far from dead. According to the Future Foundation, this belief is shared by the respondents, representatives of the British public.

A recent report on social mobility, Unleashing Aspirations, created by The Panel on Fair Access to the Professions for the Labour government in 2009, highlights the woeful lack of social mobility in Britain. The report is quite frank in providing evidence demostrating that access to society’s most prestigious ‘middle-class’ jobs has become less socially representative over the past few decades, and this is accentuated by the fact that over half of professionals attended independent schools as compared to only 7 per cent of the population (The Panel on Fair Access to the Professions, 2009, p. 11). This figure is heightened when one examines the proportion of those independently schooled by profession, for example, judges (75 per cent), finance directors (70 per cent), top civil servants (45 per cent) and members of parliament (32 per cent). The figures are taken from a study of two cohorts: the first born in 1958, the second born in 1970, and the comparison highlights the fact that access to professional jobs is increasingly dominated by those born in the higher echelons of society:

Doctors born in 1970 typically grew up in families with incomes 63% higher than the average family’s income, and lawyers in families with incomes 64% above the average family’s income (2009, p. 13).

The above figures are considerable higher than the figures for the 1958 cohort, and highlight growing social exclusivity. It is hard to read these figures and to concur with Davis and Moore’s vision of a society in which professional occupations will attract the most able and deserving. It also makes us more likely to treat Lawrence James’s appraisal of the middle class with a little more caution.

James (2008, p. 591) argues that middle-class groups provide their children with advantages so as to assist their progress, and that middle-class parents ‘do so out of choice, and in the process, sometimes have to practice self-denial. This is always worth remembering whenever the left raises the issue of “privilege” or “advantage”’. His understanding of middle-class success has a strong moral dimension: it is based on a vision of deserving, hard-working and ascetic middle classes; it is precisely these longstanding middle-class values that enable members of the class to succeed in a meritocracy. By contrast, the Unleashing Aspiration Report paints a picture of upward social mobility in decline rather than in the ascent. The panel that created the report is hardly grounded in radically leftist thinking: it was, after all, carried out by members of New Labour. However, the findings presented jar with the picture of meritocracy presented by Davis and Moore, and the more recent embodiment of such an argument in James’s vision of middle-class Britain.

It can be seen from the above that assumptions regarding meritocracy are inaccurate, and research by Blanden et al. (2005) demonstrates that intergenerational mobility in the UK has actually fallen over the past few decades. Their report on intergenerational mobility in Europe and North America examined a cohort of people born in 1970 and compared them to a cohort born in 1958, and found an increasing relationship between family income and educational attainment (Blanden, Gregg and Machin, 2005). They found that the expansion of higher education in recent decades has disproportionally benefitted people from affluent families, and that compared to other European countries, Britain, along with the United States is at the low e...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Culture and the Middle Classes: An Introduction
• 1 The Middle Classes: A Cohesive Middle Class?
• 2 The Middle Classes: Dominant Groupings
• 3 Culture
• 4 Theatre-Goers and the Silver Disposition
• 5 Cultural Practices and the Silver Disposition
• 6 Defensive Formations and the English Countryside
• Bibliography
• Index