Class is Permanent...

Quinn has an entertaining musing on "class":

In my penchant for eating chips and curry in the street you could consider me working class, while my penchant for using the word "penchant" could mark me out as middle class. So where do I fit in?

Well, yesterday, as I was about to pop out to the shops [Morrisons], I asked my wife if there was anything we had run out of that I could pick up along the way.

“We just need some balsamic vinegar and a bottle of extra virgin olive oil,” she replied.

I agree with him, but am less able at introspection. So rather than debate which class I belong to, I prefer debating what idea of "class" I think is applicable. Is it the British "upper-middle-working" class system? The American "white collar-blue collar" class system? Each of which (as Quinn notes) have become immensely blurred - I used to wear blue shirts to the office... For sure class systems are still in use (hence we celebrate Wayne Rooney and hate Paris Hilton), but it all seems as irrelevent to me as it does to Robbie Fowler: 'If there's one thing that does my head in, it's all the stuff banging on about Toxteth being this shit-hole, the inference being that it was miraculous I managed to claw my way out of there.'

I don't think class can be objectively defined and tested by survey - it's as relevant as we make it, and simply a projection of societal bias and snobbery. Class is a type of attitude, and therefore I don't find the British and American class distinctions helpful at all - they're objective definitions rather than  subjective beliefs. In contrast Russian and Australian notions of class seem more helpful.

The simplistic difference is that whilst class in Britain and America is something to be overcome, in Russia and Australia it's something to be celebrated. That's crude (perhaps explaining some parts of America but certainly not others), but gets at a deeper truth: regardless of background you can be grounded yet ambitious.

Comments

[Quinn]

I think we broadly agree; the main point of my post was to say that the whole thing is silly; it is subjective, in the eye of the beholder, and says more about the categoriser than about those being categorised.

Insofar as I discussed which class I belong to it was more an ironic discussion with myself about the daftness of the whole business, and something to fill up a few moments on a Sunday morning.

[AJE]

Yeah, reading through it looks as if I was suggesting that I wanted to look at things differently. That wasn't my intention - I wasn't trying to contradict anything you said - so i've ammended it. I hope it's clearer now that I'm trying to complement your article.

[Quinn]

Cheers; I thought I knew where you were coming from, but I also thought someone who didn't follow the link could get the wrong end of the stick about what I was trying to say.

Thanks for the clarification, and thanks for the link in the first place.

[dearieme]

I recommend being entirely relaxed about these matters, unless there's a risk that the buggers make golf compulsory.