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I would suggest that class distinction in Britain is tautological in nature, that British elites don't want to be elite so much as they cannot easily get used to the norms of any other class. One's class is too deeply embedded to feel truly comfortable in another class. I think it's mutual, too: a small number of those from lower classes attempt to imitate the elite (with varying degrees of success), but I think the majority wouldn't want to move into a different class if they could.
This is my purely personal perspective, and I think it puts me into the camp of ascribing class behaviour to Pierre Bourdieu's 'misrecognition' theory as described in the paper. Perhaps part of the effect is that (some) mannerisms and behaviours of the upper classes in Britain are simply more useful to those in positions of power. This then cements the notion of these classes as befitting social institutions - the social error is ascribing the virtue of the institution back to its leaders, who may well not be any more virtuous than the average across classes.
> "I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas."
The upper classes love to experiment with being in the lower classes, so long as they can retreat back if it gets too real.
One of my favorite books on the subject - "Down and Out in Paris and London"
"Common People" by Pulp is a great example of that
> British elites don't want to be elite so much as they cannot easily get used to the norms
Like working and coping with (comparatively) low income?
Most people have to work and cope. If you don't have to work and cope, that makes you fundamentally unlike most people, because even if you do work and cope, it'll be on your terms. Even if some of the work and some of the cope is genuinely fun and engaging, I guarantee that nobody wants to have to do it and therefore that elites want to be elite even if it is gauche to say so out loud.
In British society this has been proven over and over as the majority identify as working class even with their socio economic status does not at all match.
In America a it’s a completely different class of worms that mostly identify as middle class and we have what British would call middle class rich.
Isn't it the other way round? Aren't the lower socio-economic classes signaling their lower status by doing weird things?
Say listening to shitty music while wearing big gold chains (real or not), Luis Vuitton cap and Luis Vuitton man purses thinking it's somehow "cool" or that it somehow "shows wealth" for example is a behavior that screams: "I'm from a low socio-economic class".
Or going to this or that country to support one's favorite soccer team, while wearing players' outfits, and singing gross songs while drunk. That also gives it away.
I also don't see many of my doctors full of tatoos (sister-in-law is a great tatoo artist btw) as if they were mexican hitmen, with piercing in the nose and ears. I saw zero doctors like that in my entire life. Same for judges, lawyers, ambassadors, etc. And nobody forces people to cover themselves in tatoos and piercing. Yet some people decide to give it away by being like that.
I mean: just as there may be shifting modes of elite distinction over the centuries, there may very well be shifting modes of low class distinction over the centuries too.
While I agree with the main point of your argument, and it seems intuitive to me since population strata have historically shown to develop distinctive cultural identities:
> there may very well be shifting modes of low class distinction over the centuries too.
I believe your perspective is biased and even discriminatory because it generalizes rap or hip hop (I assume) music as inferior, associates soccer enthusiasts with drunkness, and links tattoos with crime.
Their perspective is biased, but not necessarily discriminatory unless they are taking actions on the basis of that bias. Also, bias is not necessarily a net-negative, bias and stereotypes form via collective observation.
Soccer hooliganism isn’t just a bias, it’s a real thing that actually happens and has resulted in bystanders being harmed. That bias can protect you by helping you avoid negative situations.
I am very annoyed at our current zeitgeist where we all behave as if bias, discrimination, and stereotyping are inherently bad things. No, they’re the result of human biology optimizing for pattern matching and recognizing those patterns.
>the emergence of a contemporary mode that publicly emphasizes everyday cultural practice (to accentuate ordinariness, authenticity, and cultural connection)
A darker interpretation: elites signal their status by doing what the rest of us can't. "Everyday cultural practice" is now out of the reach of most, due to the contemporary nature of housing, work, education, and healthcare.
Having kids and is becoming the ultimate status signal in my younger social circles. It's weird, but makes sense given the exorbitant costs of housing, education, and healthcare (all strongly associated with children).
It is not just having kids, which is relatively cheap.
It is having kids and affording healthcare, their own room in the house, friends to play with (i.e. daycare) so that they are not just watching a screen all day, giving them access to sports and other organized physical activities, education in at least an average school (full of kids who have at least average household incomes), hosting birthdays, going on vacations (especially flying places).
If I were to ask myself if I would have had kids if I were not able to afford the above, I would say no. And I grew up without any of that.
Interesting and complicated. Arguably, the Bloomsbury set tried to reform the idea of elite to be based on a much lower bar to entry, notably taste instead of skill and responsibility. Criticisms of aristocracy use a bit misdirection and equivocation about what they want to replace, and then stack on the rest of the justifications that support the idea that a legitimate elite is liquid and interchangeable - because they have reframed the legitimacy to be as arbitrary and accessible as taste and position.
The paper's use of the word "highbrow," frames pursuits in terms of taste instead of their bar to entry, where someone playing golf can be considered as having an equivalently highbrow interest as someone who sails or rides horses, which is like comparing playing video games to programming or electrical engineering. Their interpretation of tastes in music conflates affect with effect, where pop music and "highbrow" music are placed on the same continuum of experience to create a grouping that seems more inclusive of lower-bar positional elites who have taste for pop music, and along side of the higher-bar company of actual musicians and patrons who support the pursuit of ideals and excellence in performance. The underlying misdirection is that the legitimacy of an elite does not require skill, responsibility, continuity, or succession - which of course a usurper would say, and so say these usurpers.
I'd argue the legitimacy and even the station of an aristocracy is a function of its actual nobility, which is the perfection of its ideals and the cost of their investment in aligning to and achieving them. The reason is that we have more in common with people who have pursued and achieved similar levels of excellence than with people who just like the same things. An olympic athlete has more in common with a CEO than someone who goes to the gym, and a concert pianist has more in common with an olympian than they do with someone who plays in a band. Interesting paper, but unless a writer is demonstrating noble ideals and the means to achieve them, I think they are misleading people.
I'm not familiar with the Bloomsbury group. Was their effort just a, oh we are going to delegitimize elites? "They're just like us!! Just a different tAstE" Or is there anything else to their argument?
Like this seems the classic leftist/materialist reframing trying to pretend there is not even a possibility of superior ideals and everything is just arbitrary and cultural. I always wonder of people pushing such ideas if they actually believe them or they just see it as a means to an end.
Why did the Bloomsbury set embark on this reform? To...claim eliteness and gain legitimacy themselves?
Nowadays the elites signal their status with Luxury Beliefs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxury_belief
https://nypost.com/2019/08/17/luxury-beliefs-are-the-latest-...
Not just nowadays. Martin Luther was complaining about practices that were already old by his time:
Thanks for the link, that piece fits very well.
There's a loooooot to unpack, but to me:
- the 3 men in the tale illustrate why these practices arise in the first place - to ease envy and direct competition
- the pardoner is disseminating "elite" practices for personal gain, being divorced from the meaning behind them in the process, and becoming a cargo cult of himself
The only concrete example that page gives is from Suella Braverman, who has just been fired for incompetence/general weirdness, and that's a difficult one in the modern Tory Party, let me tell you. I am... unconvinced this is a thing.
Wikipedia has it flagged:
> This article may document a neologism or protologism in such a manner as to promote it. (October 2023)
If idealism were a "luxury" it would suggest the status quo is some sort of dystopia; who wouldn't want to change such a world for the better?
> ...third, a contemporary mode characterized by the blending of highbrow pursuits with everyday forms of cultural participation, such as spending time with family, friends, and pets...
Is it a side effect of internet? Easier to engage in highbrow activities from anywhere and combine it with a family life. Another contributing factor is the presumably larger percentage of women in the elite.
It was never an issue for elites to have easy access to engage in highbrow pursuits while also hanging out with family, if that's what they wanted to do, even before the Internet. Reading this sentence, what immediately comes to mind is Princess Diana picking up her kids from school in an off the shelf Philadelphia Eagles jacket, signaling that she's just like any other mom, maybe even just a little more hip. No doubt earlier that week she might have sat in a private box at the Royal Opera House or sat at a private dinner party in a bespoke gown out of reach for anyone else.
Interestingly enough, official replicas of this jacket were recently made and sold for $400. They sold out instantly. This is because people want to associate themselves with the "aristocracy" of Princess Di. She isn't quite "ordinary" yet. :) https://www.mitchellandness.com/team-varsity-jacket-philadel...
Probably not the internet by itself, but the general broadening of education must be a factor.
Up until relatively recently, knowing, say, a couple of words in Latin or the definition of a polynomial was a sure sign of high-class education. Now that hoi polloi aren't as easily impressed, you would need a much greater depth to differentiate yourself that way.
But that's hard work. Much easier to shitpost on Instagram.
No; it would have started in the last decades of the previous century.
Something similar is going on in fashion, where "fashion" brands continuously steal "low class" clothing.
This is where the trends for sweater pants, "ugly dad sneakers", puffer jackets, etc come from.
Balanciaga perfected this art, take something cheap and common that everybody uses, add a small quirk, slap a $1000 price on it and call it a day.
Young people are buying more luxury brands as well. I think it is significant growth demography for these brands.
I think there are some things the 'elite classes' know of and do that most people just aren't aware of and have no access to. For example certain private clubs in London, dinning clubs, certain student groups at Oxford/Cambridge, hunting groups in Scotland, aristocratic balls, etc, that are all heavily nepotistic or literally just not possible to join without a certain upbringing.
Emulation might be a thing, and affordability to hobbies is at an all time high, but I think this misses a few things that separate classes because they're just not accessible to most.
Sure, but it feels like we're missing the forest for the trees. The big class distinction is owning assets for a living instead of working for a living.
If you plug in a more precise definition of "assets" and "living" you can turn this into a net worth threshold, but the number itself is far less interesting than what happens to incentives and strategies as you go from working to owning. They completely change. Night and day. Noble and peasant.
This isn't a "capitalism is feudalism in disguise" rant -- it's great that the nobility don't own the monopoly on violence anymore and that's enormous progress, but the "rich people get paid for being rich" bit stuck with us and isn't going away any time soon.
Considering the role of social media today, it seems like you can explain past elite culture as a near-monopoly on novelty, until at least the advent of newspapers.
This surely was a source of influence and power, but must have also had the effect of putting pressure on elites to keep filling the role of novelty-producer, lest they lose attention and distinction.
The method used means any conclusion says more about the selection process of Who's Who and how it has evolved over time than any reasonably objective determination of who or what constitutes eliteness.
"Objectively elite" is a questionable concept. This paper deals with elites defined as those mentioned in a notable prestige catalog of people (Who's Who), and that's a perfectly fine limitation.
I would like to see this type of analysis extended to other prestige people catalogs. In my country, I know there were catalogs for educators ("Norske skolefolk") and physicians ("Norske leger"), I've had some use of them in my genealogy work. My great-grandmother, who had a single year at the teacher's seminary, was included in one of those books and felt it was important that the country should know she was a knitter.
For good modern coverage, read the "Crazy Rich Asians" series. Not just the first one, all three of them.
There was a time in Silicon Valley when the Los Altos Hunt ran Los Altos Hills. Once, some new landowner had the audacity to put a fence across a horse trail easement. The mayor, the police chief, and the master of the hunt showed up with wire cutters and took out the fence. The Hunt quietly disappeared in 2018.
Surprised not more mention of Peter Turchin who has books on more modern examples of Civilizations that had produced too many elite's. Became top-heavy with elite's, and then collapsed.
tl;dr: 'Elites' (or at least those to be found in Who's Who) now prefer to affect a taste for 'ordinariness' instead of preferring high culture or horsey pursuits.
This is the countersignaling phase:
It also reflects the curse of 11th generational wealth, Estate heavy, cash poor.
Not to mention the Jarvis Cocker fascination: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxhQiiNJG74
That's one interpretation. It might also be that having a "normal" life with pets, vacations and cupcakes is sufficiently difficult for regular people today that instagramming about it is elite enough.
I don't know how you begin to ask a question like this without articulating why British elites want distinction in the first place. Sexual selection?
Indeed, it’s for assortive mating, which is a phenomenon of many if not all societies (even if the US press has only discovered it over the last decade). But then such systems are to preserve class status and power.
These cultural practices then serve multiple functions: one is to provide a common culture that makes such marriages work, another is to use values-based definitions which makes them both more flexible and yet more clear.
One point overlooked by this excellent article is the structure of the shift to highbrow culture. Before ~1900 the activities were not only expensive (e.g. the Season, the hunt) but were rooted in lowbrow culture as much as today (an aristo could reasonably participate in farm festivals, help with a cow with a breach calf, etc without loss of status).
The Bloomsbury shift to “highbrow” reflected the post WWI (relative) impoverishment of the elites: it didn’t require the extravagant expense of balls and states, yet still required (less) expensive education and leisure time. It could also be paid for by the state (as discussed in the article by the BBC, but also museums and such), something the elites had the right access to effectuate, transferring the funds from a broader tax base to their own benefit.
Probably sexual selection, but not just that. Many people like to have some basis for feeling that they're better than others - they're smarter, or better looking, or stronger, or richer, or a better cook, or something. Well, the elites have defined a game of social status (specifically status within their circles). This is a game at which they win and we lose. This lets them feel like they are better (literally "our betters").
But if you think about it, they defined a game where they not only get to write the rules, they also get (collectively) to be the judges of the contestants. And, no surprise, they keep coming out the winners and everybody else keeps coming out the losers. For everyone else, the only winning move is not to play. Let the "elite" play their narcissistic status game by themselves. Instead of trying to imitate them (and failing), find something real do and to be.
I have learnt from a historian that when the elites adopt the modes of the plebeians, things go badly wrong.
>I have learnt from a historian that when the elites adopt the modes of the plebeians, things go badly wrong.
Interesting theory.
Would you care to provide a couple of historical examples?
Fortunately the 20th-century has seen deeply unprecedented cultural dynamics over and over, so these kinds of doomsaying trendlines aren't much use anymore.
It's a meme we've been hearing a lot lately: "We need better elites", and we really do need better ones. Modern elites are increasingly degenerating. Too many Kardashian's and no Washington's, no Gracchus's.
Yes, definitely. See Lucius Sergius Catilina.