to think that class isn't just a British thing

[WyclefJohn]

Class gets discussed a lot on MN, and I often see someone say something along the lines of that is such a British obsession, and you don't see it elsewhere.

In my experience, social class exists in every country, because it's a natural result of what happens when some people have more privilege then others. In my experience, I've yet to visit a country where social class doesn't to some extent determine your success in life - be it from the US, to continental Europe, Africa, Asia and so on.

When British people go abroad, they may not recognise the cues, but I am yet to see a country where they don't exist.

AIBU?

It's one of the only countries I'm aware of where someone can make a stinking great fortune, and still not be accepted as one of the elite

That is true of most countries. America, that supposedly classless society? You could be the richest man in the world but you would never be Boston Brahmin or a SF Nabob or even the New york 400. And nothing has changed, really. Money doesn't equal class almost anywhere in the world.

Rubbish, existensial. Rockerfeller and Carnegie went from childhoods as son of a con-man and immigrant, respectively, to the richest men in America. In one generation. They went to the top of the social pile immediately.

Though I'm not arguing with you about America being classless. Clearly it isn't. But class there is based on race and money, first and foremost. Here it's based on so much more than race - because you can't tell that someone like me is Irish just by looking at me. They developed other clues to keep their social circle free of those from the white colonies, and of jumped-up progeny of their servants and farmhands.

Rockerfellers father was a con man but his parents were descended from Mary Boleyn and Edmund of Langley on his mothers side, and his fathers side from rich plantation owners.
Class is about a lot more than money!

YANBU. Brits are just more aware of it. I am a regular visitor to Ireland, which lots of (middle-class ) Irish people like to claim is a classless society - the eff it is!

Class is a weird thing in Britain. It obviously exists in other countries, but there is something about it here that is so pervasive and instinctual.

I think one marker of class in Britain is that the working and middle classes have always been pretty fluid, with families moving between both strata through the generations due to changes in personal circumstances, while the upper class seems to be this monolithic thing.

This perceived ceiling informs our character and makes class so important here - we sneer at those "who don't know their place", whether that's a Hyacinth Bucket type or an aristo trying to be a working class rock star.

It obviously exists in other countries, but there is something about it here that is so pervasive and instinctual
Only to British people. If you grew up somewhere else then that places class system would seem pervasive and instinctual to you.

Christmas should be fun especially for children so give me tinsel in lurid colours, multi coloured lights and any other fun stuff over your "heritage" decorations. Once again MN reminds me how common I am..... I remember a post a couple of years back how a child wasn't allowed to decorate the tree because it wasn't " stylish" I bet Christmas was a lot of fun in that household.

I don't understand how tinsel makes anything fun for children, but you should do it as you like.

My children decorate the tree and then i redo it when they are in bed to make it neat and symmetrical and tasteful

Thanks I wasn't asking your permission

All of the people arguing that class in America is only about money: have you read 'The Great Gatsby'? It's about money and class, and how they are not identical - and Jay Gatsby dies at the end, effectively slain for his failure to recognise that class and money are not the same thing and to demonstrate his failure to transform money into membership of an elite.

Oh really? I totally thought you were.

And then there's the film 'Metropolitan', and even the Donna Tartt book (which I've forgotten the name of). I think 'Bright Lights, Big City' explores the class/money disjunction, too - and is a bit of a satire on the signifiers of the class system in America.

I think it's bonkers to think it's more prevalent in the UK than anywhere else.

There's a thread on MN about the French and names at the moment. And it's worth remembering that the sociologist who explored the way that class is reproduced outside and beyond the specifically economic sphere was Pierre Bourdieu - French, and using French culture to explore and explicate his theory.

I'm not sure it would, existential. I get what you are saying but there are intangiable subtleties in the way class is perceived in the U.K.

I spent a lot of my childhood in another country, and I've lived in a number of other countries, where there are definitely class issues but it is more something learned than through instinct. For example, you would know that someone with a certain background or living in a certain place would be considered "posh", and there are definitely markers like accent, but you wouldn't feel that they are posh by how they carried themselves, how they wore their clothes etc.

It's sort of an intangible thing.

Prep, by Curtis Sittenfield belongs on that list of great American novels exploring class, too, catfromjapan. I highly recommend it, if you haven't read it.

It was me who said that in the UK class is defined primarily by who ones forbears were, and less by wealth, than in many other countries. Other people brought up America - I then said that race and money were their biggest class markers. Thinking about it, I was wrong, in that its race, money and education. That's a big one out there, and can be seen strongly through that list of novels, right down to whether Jay Gatsby could be an Oxford man or not, based on his garish pink trousers.

I'm not disagreeing that every country has an element of those on the top rung wanting to pull the ladder up behind them. Of course they do. But what propels people onto that top rung - and what marks people out as not-of-the-quality to ever make it - has more to do with perceived genetic superiority than education, wealth or geography in the UK. From what I understand, this is the result of Britain's history of Empire, including having so many of its conquered nations as immediately neighbours.

Absolutely agree with basic idea: class was very definitely present when I grew up in Social Democrat Sweden.

And interestingly, some of the differentiation factors were the same: the differentiation between the people who have their dinner at mid-day and the ones who have it in the evening. Divisions of vocabulary, divisions of customs, divisions of accent, divisions of name. English names derived from American films definitely denoted working-class origins. Very few bank managers' sons with names like Kent (Kenneth) or Ronnie.

I had a tutor at university, son of an internationally known university professor, descendant of a long line of middle-class urbanites, who spoke in a very definite working-class accent: the political point would rather have been wasted if the class system had not existed.

However, there were also some very important differences. I never came across the attitude- so prevalent here- that the lower classes had no valuable everyday skills, that they knew nothing about proper child rearing, for instance, or that they didn't know how to feed themselves properly, or that they wouldn't have any valuable everyday skills to teach their children, that all knowledge has to seep down from above.

Our nextdoor neighbours were, respectively, a factory worker (assembly line) and a lumberjack. While my university-educated parents may have felt a certain superiority related to their degrees and travelling, they never believed that this would automatically give them any deeper insights into the wider issues of life: that they would, for instance, be better at understanding the needs of their children or be more sensible around money. That attitude was new to me when I arrived in this country.

There was none of that whole pisstaking of the chavs, either. And the feckless poor was not really a concept we knew much about. Probably because we all had rather similar aspirations about everyday lifestyle.

It is interesting that you say class is linked with Britain's history of Empire. I live in South America and while I used to think class didn't really exist or if it did it was linked to race or wealth rather than older systems of class like the UK, I'm less sure now that I've been here longer. I think there is a lot influence from Spanish and Portuguese class systems, which I think are alive and well. I think countries like Brazil for example have class systems that are not entirely governed by race and wealth and have throwbacks of a much older Imperial Portuguese system which was very similar to the UK. Having lived in the USA and Brazil I think class is more prevalent in the former colony of Brazil rather than that of the USA due to longer and stronger ties to the class system of their European colonizers.

All of the people arguing that class in America is only about money: have you read 'The Great Gatsby'? It's about money and class, and how they are not identical - and Jay Gatsby dies at the end, effectively slain for his failure to recognise that class and money are not the same thing and to demonstrate his failure to transform money into membership of an elite.

One of the things that book illustrates (and much has changed since it was written) is class within a particular region of the US. It's about the Northeast. The vast majority of people in the US would have no clue about the type of signifiers represented in the book. And when the signifiers don't signify, they don't function to separate classes, except to a few.

As for accents, one of the interesting things that has happened in the US in the last 50 years is that many of the "strong" elements of regional accents have disappeared, likely the result of television.

I agree with people on the thread who say that one of the main differences in the UK is that there are more signifiers that are commonly understood. For example, there is another thread on MN that is up to 25 pages or so about what people call their evening meal, and, of course, much of the discussion is about social class.

There are definitely class distinctions in the US, but there are fewer signifiers, and some of the ones that are important to the so-called Northeastern blue bloods can't even be read outside their small society.

You hear a lot of “working class and proud of it “ , literally people actually say that, but you seldom to never hear someone say “ middle/upper class and proud of it

That's because most people sneer at the middle classes (and it happens on MN a lot). I have often read or heard said in a derogatory tone " Oh how middle class". And upper class people don't need to say it because they are already proud of it.

The Christmas decorations one is interesting - the most solidly UC person I know (grandparents on both sides titled, very trad. Public school etc) has tinsel on his tree but no fairy lights (real candles in wee clips) and an ancient fairy on the top. He would never ever ever have outside lights or anything 'plarstic'

Class has a slightly different slant in Scotland than in England. A point which is usually overlooked.

There's a colonial element to our UC.

Also there are shire/city, west/east and most importantly sectarian divides that are much more pervasive than class divides.

The questions aren't dinner or tea, napkin or serviette, living room or lounge but chapel or church, christening or baptism, Celtic or rangers.

When people are scoping out someone's position in society and asking which school they went to it isn't to determine if it was state or private!

Class on the British sense-rigid, taboo, almost impossible to surpass doesn't exist in other parts of the world. In Australia for example the nuances are quite simple and easy to pick up so it's quite easy to move between classes if you have the money. That's all it really is, money and the right brands and slightly improved manners-v slightly. Here it takes decades and postgraduate degrees/a good marriage/etiquette lessons to make the leap from working class to middle class and then from middle class to upper middle then upper middle to upper. You can't buy your way up here, class is something that you are born into and it is very hard to escape.

I like beautiful tree decs but this includes years old toilet roll reindeers etc made by the kids. And coordinating baubles is definitely not in. I like a ramshackle beautiful tree, just not stuffed smurfs

cory, I don't agree that many British people think working class people are bad at stuff. Instead we think salt of the earth, core back bone of Britain is the hard working working class man and his wife etc. We hugely admire people of all classes. Only the uneducated would look down on others. I hope that attitude is not prevalent. Sometimes you get people who are only in the next class up by the skin of their teeth and those people and only they like to cricitise those "below" because they feel insecure in their own position I suppose but it's not right and it's not fair.

I agree in the US as much as the UK money has never bought class. It takes quite a few generations to move class.

I don't think the middle class are sneered at what it is is sneered at that are those who will give out signals that they are desperate to be seen as middle class that is sneered at

Lower working classes are truly sneered at chav being the least offensive term thrown at them

Salt of the earth can be so patronising it often comes along with the attitude of know your place your are good people and happy with your lot