Middle class anxiety

[chilango]

I strongly recommend. Best thing I've read on social reproduction of schools

Oh I know. It's my "specialist area". Just haven't got round to it.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

These values contradict the lived experience of w/c families. Bourdieu talks of this as "symbolic violence".

Some of gibberish and blether on this thread - mainly by Feralhadley and 8ball - indicate that more people need to read Bourdieu to be frank.

From the crude ‘you don’t get othering if you stick to working class areas like wot I done’ to crude economic determinations of class, it’s embarrassing in the context of this debate

 

[8ball]

Some of gibberish and blether on this thread - mainly by Feralhadley and 8ball - indicate that more people need to read Bourdieu to be frank.

From the crude ‘you don’t get othering if you stick to working class areas like wot I done’ to crude economic determinations of class, it’s embarrassing in the context of this debate

Nah, from chilango’s post I see what was meant. I’d still say we weren’t “othered” while we were there in terms of my understanding of the term. We *were* inculcated with a certain system that had certain expectations for us.

By which I mean we weren’t “the other” as such. We were the local majority in a world that looked a certain way and an institution that enforced certain filters.

As being from the one mixed race family in the area, and by being a pretty weird kid, there were other kinds of “othering” that were very much on my mind at the time, iyswim.

Anyway, hope that makes some sense. From what I have read “othering” is what happens to the outgroup who is considered not to ‘belong’.

Ps - chilango ’s post laid it out perfectly - I think it can get a bit snobby when you start saying things like people need to read a certain book to understand that kind of stuff

 

[Winot]

Brown sauce; HP = MC, Daddies = you're OK.

Blimey. First time I’ve ever been described as WC.

 

[ferrelhadley]

indicate that more people need to read Bourdieu to be frank.

Great stuff. Incoherent rage against most people in our country justified by some obscure text most people do not give a fuck about.
The amusing mixture of narcissistic assumption you own a widely used phrase and your utter contempt for anyone not lining up to suck you off.

 

[Supine]

Bourdieu sounds like a book the upper class would read.

 

[8ball]

Great stuff. Incoherent rage against most people in our country justified by some obscure text most people do not give a fuck about.
The amusing mixture of narcissistic assumption you own a widely used phrase and your utter contempt for anyone not lining up to suck you off.

I’m not sure words on this thread are being used the way I’ve seen them defined, but I really don’t see where Smokeandsteam was expressing incoherent rage against the majority of people.

 

[8ball]

Bourdieu sounds like a book the upper class would read.

So are you saying “it’s not for you plebs!” ?

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Great stuff. Incoherent rage against most people in our country justified by some obscure text most people do not give a fuck about.
The amusing mixture of narcissistic assumption you own a widely used phrase and your utter contempt for anyone not lining up to suck you off.

You’ve spent the entire thread snarking and sneering before finally revealing your stumbling ignorance on the matter. Embarrassing performance all round

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Bourdieu sounds like a book the upper class would read.

He was working class, the son of a postman, and I’d recommend him to anyone who wants to understand how class works

 

[Supine]

So are you saying “it’s not for you plebs!” ?

No comment as I don't obsess about class. Anyone can read it - or not - I don't give a shit

 

[Pickman's model]

Great stuff. Incoherent rage against most people in our country justified by some obscure text most people do not give a fuck about.
The amusing mixture of narcissistic assumption you own a widely used phrase and your utter contempt for anyone not lining up to suck you off.

Name a text most people do give a fuck about

 

[8ball]

Name a text most people do give a fuck about

The lyrics to “Happy Birthday”

 

[ferrelhadley]

You’ve spent the entire thread snarking and sneering

Self awareness interventions.
That is the sole purpose of this thread.
Hey you have not threatened to murder people you disagree with for a bit, you might lose your Urban 75 "street" cred here. Get on it!

 

[Pickman's model]

The lyrics to “Happy Birthday”

So bourdieu's distinction v happy birthday

 

[8ball]

So bourdieu's distinction v happy birthday

I answered the question as asked, Guv.

Edit: snob

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Self awareness interventions.
That is the sole purpose of this thread.
Hey you have not threatened to murder people you disagree with for a bit, you might lose your Urban 75 "street" cred here. Get on it!

The first two sentences make no sense at all, bar in the swamp of your head.

The rest of it is frankly mental

 

[ferrelhadley]

The first two sentences make no sense at all, bar in the swamp of your head.

The rest of it is frankly mental

Disagreeing with someone as blatantly genius with you is clearly mental.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Disagreeing with someone as blatantly genius with you is clearly mental.

But you haven’t disagreed. I’ve have more respect for you if you had.

Now pack up your deckchair and jog on.

 

[oryx]

That'd the colours of the EU flag tho

I did realise that - wasn't confusing the yellow in the EU flag with LibDem yellow!

The thing is, I think you're conflating a group of pretty fanatical remainers (said flag-wavers/FBPEs) with an enormous section of society, just under half if you use the research industry standard ferrelhadley quoted, a lot more than that if you use the Marxist definition of not owning the means of production. The whole situation is a lot more nuanced than that.

A lot of working class people will have voted to remain. If you add the issue of BAME voters into the mix, a majority of them voted to remain.

This is from Parliament's own analysis (it actually surprised me as I would have thought that there would have been more of a link between poor socio-economic conditions and voting to leave, simply because of the - understandable - desire for change and the perception of a vote to leave as a protest vote against the status quo):

There is no obvious relationship between the proportion of people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance, and the proportion of people voting Leave in a local authority. Likewise, there is no obvious relationship between the proportion of children living in low income households in a local authority, and the proportion of people voting Leave.


This suggests that votes for Leave and Remain are not strongly related to this set of socio-economic indicators individually.

 

[treelover]

Manter said

That the other stuff didn’t matter; for lots of people it did matter too

If you means issues like poverty, austerity(this really was the wrong word to convey things bit like neo-liberalism) then i would argue the liberal middle classes left the stage, cannot imagine now people prepared to lose their houses in solidarity with equivalent of the Poll Tax resisters, etc, never mind the Miners Strike.

 

[treelover]

Of course it mattered to many.

What I am asking is why these regressive material changes didn't prompt the same response from a huge swathe of the liberal middle class that we've witnessed since 2016

Last big Anti-Austerity march TUC one, 2012, huge, though the youth doing the trashing didn't help, imo,

 

[treelover]

They were packing the theatre at I, Daniel Blake

Huge turn outs, we had a stall, and lots of people came over in tears, saying, we didn't know, we need to do more, especially youth, lots signing up, emoting then nothing, well palestine, EU,. etc.

 

[treelover]

I think there are two deep and long run currents within middle class phenomenology that have been forced to the surface by Brexit. They go to the very core of its collective identity, regardless of politics - and have been upturned by the referendum.

Firstly, the middle class adopts the role of the narrating class of politics and culture in Britain, on the basis of its certainty that what it thinks is influential and important and has agency. This has been their prevailing view, outside of economic matters, for 50 years, but has been confronted head on by Brexit.

Second, they widely possess a mistaken assumption that a) most working class people aspire to join them and adapt and learn their superior values and b) that there is, fundamentally, a set of shared interests between the two classes against the elite rather than two entirely separate classes with opposing interests and divergent histories. Both of these assumptions have been broken by the last three years and the response has been barely concealed resentful fury

Finally, I have heard many middle class liberals, who otherwise rate themselves as impeccably woke, freely toss around the sneers and knowling comments about the working class. Popular middle class culture is awash with implied criticisms of the working class, especially proles with a white skin. These are people who would never dream of telling a racist joke, but they think nothing of ridiculing or criticising those of lesser economic means. Every group has its ‘other.’ For a lot of middle class people it is, and always has been, the working class.

yes, it is clear their hegemony has been challenged, and they don't like it, No deal still a disaster though.

 

[treelover]

I think there are two deep and long run currents within middle class phenomenology that have been forced to the surface by Brexit. They go to the very core of its collective identity, regardless of politics - and have been upturned by the referendum.

Firstly, the middle class adopts the role of the narrating class of politics and culture in Britain, on the basis of its certainty that what it thinks is influential and important and has agency. This has been their prevailing view, outside of economic matters, for 50 years, but has been confronted head on by Brexit.

Second, they widely possess a mistaken assumption that a) most working class people aspire to join them and adapt and learn their superior values and b) that there is, fundamentally, a set of shared interests between the two classes against the elite rather than two entirely separate classes with opposing interests and divergent histories. Both of these assumptions have been broken by the last three years and the response has been barely concealed resentful fury

Finally, I have heard many middle class liberals, who otherwise rate themselves as impeccably woke, freely toss around the sneers and knowling comments about the working class. Popular middle class culture is awash with implied criticisms of the working class, especially proles with a white skin. These are people who would never dream of telling a racist joke, but they think nothing of ridiculing or criticising those of lesser economic means. Every group has its ‘other.’ For a lot of middle class people it is, and always has been, the working class.

The 'radical scene', was bad for this.

Do you have a blog, Smoke, we need voices like this, Lisa Mckenzie has one, but we need more.

 

[treelover]

does anyone actually rate themselves as 'woke', impeccably or otherwise?

in the U.S, absolutely.

 

[Pickman's model]

in the U.S, absolutely.

this isn't a thread about america, it bring in UK p&p should give that away

 

[treelover]

*unpacks deckchair*
Whiney middle class twats whining about other whiney middle class twats. with zero self awareness.
Urban 75 always giving you something to laugh at.

most of this discussion, with some exceptions, has been analytical, etc, not personalising it.

 

[treelover]

Didn't need to be that "class-aware" to see that it was the disabled & other work-shy degenerates that were paying for the crash...whilst their own shareholdings/property portfolios were doing very nicely.

20 Billlion taken form disabled and sick, etc, since 2010, in benefits and services.

 

[treelover]

My daughter, a social worker, has just phoned me, incandescent with rage, after a 'congratulations' card has been handed around the office. 'Congrats on your new (bigger) house'. She witheringly mentioned how no-one ever offered her a card in the event of her moving to a different private rental. A huge uncomfortable silence ensued and mutterings of 'O well, what do you expect from N'. Her point, which none of them even considered, is, once again, the enormous gap between the mc, dual income, property-owning workers and the people who they are supposed to support...which is shaded by contempt and disgust at worst and condescending patriarchal noblesse oblige at best...without even a shred of shared solidarity.

In London, there will be wc social workers, because, even with a gloss of professionalism, it is a career which is not highly regarded...but in Tory Norfolk, the class difference is unbreachable.

She is submitting a little rage-y essay to 'Lumpen'.

is that an online blog/journal?