How do we decide 'social class'?

[badspella]

I have been reading one or two threads about 'social class', and it reminded me that I am really confused about the whole notion of social classification (the labels we use, rather than stratification itself).

For example, I know a family who are farmers. They own a good few acres of prime land, and live in a large listed house. However, the house is falling to pieces (holes in the roof, rotten floorboards and so on) and the grandfather left school before receiving any formal qualifications. The son (who now farms the land) completed secondary education. All the family speak with a strong regional accent. The farm is worth well over £1 million.

What class are they?

Then, there is one of my friends who has a masters degree and PhD, is a university lecturer. She was brought up in a large detached house, but, she lives in a rented council house.

What class is she?

I must state that I do not spend my time trying to fit people into little boxes, but I do wonder how 'class' is 'decided', especially when contexts are so complex.

I don't think there is a clear system. People are complicated. The more I've become aware of this and the facade some people project, the more judgements based on perceived class feel irrelevant. You can never tell.

Some people on the surface are very wealthy and would be judged as middle class, but would be in danger of losing it all very quickly with some bad decisions, so I think it is a very superficial way of evaluating someone's norms and values.

I tend to judge people on the way they treat other people in the first instance. Some decent people will have a very healthy bank account, but it would not be very obvious as they lead a very simple life.

I've never got my head around the class system (didn't grow up in UK) but how it was explained to me once (about 20 years ago) was that manual/unskilled workers and tradesmen are considered working class and tertiary educated/professionals are considered middle class. Sounds absolutely bonkers to me and I'm sure that's changed in the last 20 years.

I think ignorance is bliss TBH as I have no idea whether I'm being judged for using the right word for items (as an aside...WTF is that about??)

Whence this MN obsession? And why?

Yes, it's embarrassing. I'm Irish and you never see threads about class on Irish parenting sites. I don't think you would see these threads on German, French, Scandinavian parenting sites!

Why do British people buy in to a labelling system that puts 90% of them at the ''bottom''.
Reject it.

Money is not a class signifier. Nor is having to work. Almost all the middle classes have to work.
Many in the upper classes do have a different attitude to money, though. They seek to maintain wealth, which is essentially money NOT spent. Hence the crumbling old country piles and holey cardigans stereotypes. The middle classes use money as a class signifier, which means it has to be spent, so that everyone can see it: cars, houses,kitchens, designer clothes etc.

Money is irrelevant of class - there are plenty of rats with gold teeth with millions in the bank who will always be working class.

Working Class - you and your ancestors had to work to live.

Middle Class - you use other people to provide your means of living. You can move down but not up.

Upper Class - your distant ancestors killed other people to amass capital so that neither you nor your more recent ancestors had to work for a living.

There's the classifications sociologists would use- A,B etc. There's occupations and professions but, when I was young, and still in certain social groups, the real give away is attitude, taste, manners and subtle messages conveyed by language. The truly upper classes never say, toilet,settee, living room pardon etc. Always lavatory or loo,sitting room or drawing room, sofa , what not pardon etc. Nancy Mitford called it 'u' and ' non u' and in the 80s Jilly Cooper's book, Class was very funny but accurate as was Grayson Perry's series on class some years ago.

School. Employment if needed. Contacts. Housing.
Many people don't understand it. I recall a documentary where sub-culture women were describing themselves, confidently, as 'middle-class'. They had accommodation, so they thought they were 'somewhere in the middle' of society, hence middle class.

I agree with pp that people should reject the class system, by the way. It helps, therefore, to stand outside it and analyse it. You can reject it by then rejecting the behaviours it perpetuates. I refuse to ask anybody 'what do you do?' when I first meet them. My opening line is "what are you interested in, then?" or similar. I also couldn't give a stuff about what anyone thinks about my car or my name or my clothes. There's a great freedom in it. Human societies have organised by hierarchy for a long time though, so another system would probably rise to replace it, probably the simple American one where only money matters.

There's some grey areas, but broadly if you imagine a company in a tower block.

Right at the top - upper class - The owner
Never comes in, doesn't really know the business, inherited it from her great great uncle, she's a distant cousin of Prince Edward and her family and the royals are connected. Hasn't ever really done any kind of work, handed education, handed businesses, handed houses etc.

Below her on the next floor down are the board members and CEO of the company. These folks went to the same expensive schools as the owner, they don't really understand the nuts and bolts of the business, but they enjoy golfing with the owner and feel like they should be upper class too, but they're not, not really, they're upper middle class...

Then the departmental managers who run the seperate divisions as they're very well educated in the sections they run like solicitors in legal, HR execs and accountants running accounting etc they know what the business as a whole actually does. The middle class, seek to get up the ladder, but often get overlooked as they lack connections as they were educated in state schools and The Universities Of ArseNowhereState or Coventry etc

Then comes the general office workers, receptionists, admin staff, data input, clerks etc The hands on machine workers manufacturing the product the company actually sells are here too, as are the drivers shipping the product, the janitorial staff and maintenance guys, the working class. Sometimes promoted up the tower, but always feel like they're still working class and often vocally champion that fact to anyone that will listen, even after 30 years of working their way up the company...

But....
then there's the people on the outside of the company, the homeless guy in the doorway starving in the cold, the unemployed person that's borrowed money to buy a short to interview for a job there.
The people unable to work there due to circumstances like sickness, disability, caring duties etc. These people are often also called working class. Sometimes they're referred to as the 'under class' channel 5 make programs about how cushy and comfortable life is relying on benefits, foodbanks and living in sink places that they're put. This class seemingly exist for the workers of our company to point at and ridicule but also to live in fear of becoming. Our imaginary company workers see the 'under class' and it's reinforced with poverty porn TV shows that they will end up like "Those people" if they don't tolerate any levels of abuse, pressure and workload. They're laughed at in the company, but feared in private as the wise people of our imagined company know that, should the company faulter and close, they're not too far from 'under class' themselves...

I think there are many different ways of looking at it. In an economic sense you could say anyone who has to work for their living rather than off the work of others (ie family money/large landlords) are working class. However we don’t tend to think of it like that, it’s much more about cultural capital, and therefore gets complicated quickly, as the OP indicated.

I think what we think of as middle class is actually upper middle class (private schools, large houses, likes perhaps classical music etc) and is a very small percentage of the population. Only 7% of children go to private schools, and some of them will be upper class. The rest of us are between lower middle class and working class and actually it’s hard to tell as it’s all stereotypes really. Like the idea a working class person can’t like opera or a middle class person can’t like Love Island say, clearly a bit nonsensical.

Thank you. There is a really interesting range of opinions, so I am reassured that I am not alone in my confusion.

I think the MN 'obsession' with class may arise because this is an anonymous space.

@PodcastFunFair

Traditionally it was based on educational attainment and occupation but its much more layered and complex now. I personally think its quite fluid and decided by other peoples point of view. Depending on who was viewing me I could be very much working class or middle class.

This

I dont care what class someone is or what I am and I certainly don’t ask questions so I can ‘rank’ them but i do find the idea of how ‘fluid’ the definitions are fascinating

Have discussed it once but I didn’t start the discussion

Someone was telling me how working class they were, i didnt agree especially as their ultimate reason for being working class was living in a two up two down

It had 4 beadrooms…

Bedrooms

Beadrooms would make the house even bigger i expect

What is the purpose of the class system and how do we use it today?

The John Cleese / Ronnie Corbett / Ronnie Barker sketch on The Frost Report summed it up perfectly, as a way to look up and to look down.

@badspella

Thank you. There is a really interesting range of opinions, so I am reassured that I am not alone in my confusion.

I think the MN 'obsession' with class may arise because this is an anonymous space.

There are anonymous spaces all over the internet. I've never seen one as utterly obsessed with social class as this one, or so full of self-declared experts.

It's tribalism, all to do with your own prejudice and labelling and comfort.

You feel X class, you don't like Tracy because she calls you out on your shit so you consider her a Y class and ever so common. Let's maybe not take the kids over because we don't want her rubbing off on them, but she's fun for a night out.

Or you feel Y class and you feel like a shit mum because Laura pushes her kid into coding for clarinet level 4 classes and your kid still misses it's mouth when picking it's nose and eating it. So you have a handy "she's not like us" signifier when she shops at Waitrose and doesn't "get it".

Simple. So class is fluid, and doesn't actually exist except when we want to exclude someone or define ourselves. It mostly talks of our own insecurities of our own upbringings- either a lack of exposure ("chavs are scary!", "Snobs are snobby") or aspirations (working as product of a state school in a privately educated arena).

If it was universably definable there wouldn't be eleventy billion threads on the subject.

If you don't give a shit about class, you're probably working class.

If you live in a property/estate passed down through the generations and there are titles in some places on the family tree, you're probably upper class.

If you spend time analysing what class you are, all the ways in which class is determined and whether your job or your origins determine your class, you're probably middle class.

Who cares!

I am only interested in whether people are decent/interesting/worth spending time or if they are not. Those are the only two 'classes' I use...

I always think class is mainly determined by how you both (assuming couple) grew up and which side of the family you are closest too. For example I know a woman who grew up upper middle to upper class family and she married a working class man. They live nearer to and do more with the woman's family, so I tend to think of them and their kids as upper middle class. If they'd moved near the working class side of the family, I'd think of them as working class I think.

I don't think it's much to do with income tbh.

Where I live, farmers are at the top of the pecking order in terms of wealth. Everything goes through the business. Weddings are nearly always follows by a charity function for that purpose, for example.

@IncompleteSenten

If you don't give a shit about class, you're probably working class.

If you live in a property/estate passed down through the generations and there are titles in some places on the family tree, you're probably upper class.

If you spend time analysing what class you are, all the ways in which class is determined and whether your job or your origins determine your class, you're probably middle class.

Agree! I don't agonise over it, but I can see there are nuances to it and I'm definitely not upper class. My dad was working class and my mum middle class. We grew up with a decent amount of money as my dad became very successful. However, I'm not and never will be upper class.