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.
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.
Well, you know. The emperor who fancies himself a music hall singer. What's her name again? There are some things that are common to a decline in an important understanding of history. There are 99, this is one of them.
This is so insightful! What did they believe the main process was, that was causing things to break?
My guesses - this is about (a) inequality reaching a breaking point, where non-elites are starting to reject the social contract, making elite signaling dangerous, and (b) that elites at that moment don't have enough justification for their elevated status (mystification, misrecognition, etc)
Well, it can't be (a). The inequality in Rome had already reached a breaking point and was completely resolved problem by then.
And by that I mean a revolutionary people's party had replaced a corrupt elected government with a divine monarchy.
(I don't think I need to describe the wonders that did for equality in the Roman state. Archeological record indicates when barbarians conquered Roman lands, the nutrition of the lower classes often improved. But for some reason those same lower classes that had destroyed the republic never complained about inequality in imperial times.)
The profits were initially distributed before you were born. Every year more profits are added to the value of society (I assume you are a part of society; if not, I do apologize) because potholes are filled, food is verified safe to eat, electricity is regulated, and generally people leave you and your stuff alone so you can do whatever you want within the bounds of the social contract.
FYI OP is answering my question on what the historian's theory was! (They were downvoted)
This route makes sense to me; I do think the deal has been getting worse and worse lately, and periodic renegotiation is required to keep things running properly.
> The emperor who fancies himself a music hall singer.
... Wait, Caligula? That was some four centuries before the Western empire bit the dust, only a few decades after the _creation_ of the empire.
I mean, I know people love blaming absolutely everything for the collapse of the Roman Empire, but delayed action of four centuries feels like pushing it.
You don't read too much history, do you? Of course I can understand the confusion. Caligula was the guy who started running from sea to sea until he came back with a very long and unrecognisable beard. Also: that was the decline of the Roman Empire. Nothing to do with the other empires that went through the same process. EDIT: Sorry, I did not read the Western Empire thing. I guess the Egyptian empires exist to this day.
This was not very helpful, to be honest. From what I gathered, what you mean is that when elites are concerned about showing off their status, by pretending to be non-elite, it means inequality has gotten to a breaking point.
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.
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.
Look, if your best sources are the most disastrous recent Tory attempt at a Home Secretary (which is saying something; post-May, it has been more or less a who's who of the weirdest available Tories) and one of Murdoch's trashier tabloids, well, I think I can be forgiven for assuming that your thing is not a thing.
It should be trivial to observe luxury beliefs in today's culture. Among many examples, are those advocating for defunding the police, while living in gated communities out in the suburbs. Or the wealthy elite who support open borders, insulated from the pressures of mass migration. Post-modernism in academia acts as a form of prestige through its obfuscatory language games, yet it distracts intellectuals from focusing on real problems, as remarked by Noam Chomsky.
All four of Dr. (as he is now) Henderson's major points: handwringing over family structure, unifying social edifice of religion, role of luck in success, and white privilege, are not first world problems: they are specifically US problems. Eg: maybe the lower classes need religion in the US, but that is not a universal truth.
I suspect I may be part of Dr. Henderson's "elite", but since I follow[0] these idealistic viewpoints as well as promoting them, and in order to avoid the Lie Direct and stick with the Retort Courteous[1]: having read the fine article my opinion is otherwise.
[0] to the point of having voted with my feet to live in a better society than the States had, and (to judge from the news) has.
Which of these beliefs to you practise in every day life? Are you a single parent? Are you in favour of defunding the police and live in a high crime neighbourhood? Are you in favour of mass immigration whilst working in a job that would be affected by this?
(households) I support a society where —as in the US of the last century in which I grew up— a single working parent suffices to support a household.
(religion) I support a society which has its own intrinsic solidarity, without needing the sort of middlemen who "love to pray standing ... in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men."
(success) I support a society where a good education —in trades as well as professions— is available even to those who have been so unwise as to pick the wrong parents.
(racism) I support a society where, sure, there's always some ethnicity on the bottom rungs, but at least it changes every generation as the old bottom rungs assimilate. (Over the last half century it's been, in turn, italians, turks, former yugoslavs, former warsaw pact, and now I guess north africans?)
Fortunately we don't have "high crime neighbourhoods" in the US sense — I think there are several obvious reasons why not, but implementing them in the US would require not only structural changes, but probably also constitutional amendment. (having seen what happened to the ERA in the Old Country, I'm not holding my breath)
- 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 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.
In principle I agree that "objectively elite" is questionable but there's no question that the measure merely assesses the institutional whims of Who's Who - I can say from experience that Henley, the polo world cup, the game fair, and the rest of "the season" is as popular as ever, if anything the non-u representation is larger than previous years. Where perhaps inclusion in Who's Who or roles that ordinarily grant inclusion have become more egalitarian I'd argue that is a dilution of elitism, not a societal shift in it or in elite-values.
The dilution of who's who-elitism one can easily measure by counting how many people there are in it per year (maybe you want to divide by the total population too).
You could make that argument and yes I agree with you that that is what the article is trying to do, I think I am awkwardly trying to reconcile meritocratically elite and aristocratically/socially elite.
The paper seems to be angling at the former while equating the two in class-terms and I think that is where it falls flat, the behaviours, shopping habits, and pastimes of the socially elite don't appear to have changed much (speaking anecdotally of course) but if assessed in terms of the meritocratic elite then yes obviously tastes have changed because the two groups are divergent when we look at trends in appointment to positions favoured by Who's Who when deciding who to include.
That last sentence is a bit of a run-on but I think it roughly conveys what I'm saying.
> ...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.
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.
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...
The Princess Di Eagles jacket is iconic here in Philly! The Kelly Green era is having a moment here in general, so M&N picked the right time for this particular throwback. It's more of a Philly retro hipster thing, as I see it, than a we live Diana thing.
Mitchell & Ness launched a lot of retro kelly green gear, most of it a lot cheaper too, but the reason this specific jacket got a much bigger reaction and turnout to the stores is Diana.
You can't decouple Princess Di from the kelly green or from retro 90s pop culture, whether you're a hipster who first saw the picture at Middle Child Clubhouse & just liked the vibes or if you were just paying attention to the news at the time. Any time you see the Philly media (social, traditional, even sports talk radio) talk about kelly green, they bring up Diana. It's as reflexive as the Philly Special, pickle juice, 4 & 26, etc. Scroll your socials back to the weekend of the Dolphins game or back to July when the jerseys were announced, and if the algorithms think you're a Philly sports fan, you'll see posts with the People photos & news articles about them (both new and contemporary).
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.
> Before ~1900 the activities were not only expensive (e.g. the Season, the hunt)
Hunting on horseback has always been elite, because horses have always been an expensive preserve of the elite. But great numbers of country-folk that are far from elite follow the hunt on foot; it's especially a Boxing Day custom. Well, at least that was the case 30-40 years ago - things may have changed. As far as fishing goes, coarse fishing in canals and so on has deep working-class roots. It's fly-fishing for salmon and trout that was (and remains) the preserve of landed gentry and their guests/customers.
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 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.
Which even though targeted middle and upper class readers, is in good part autobiographical [1], from a time when 'George Orwell' was living under harsh conditions and experienced poverty.
It's a great reading. I read it in preparation for my first vacation in London ;)
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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?
>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.
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.
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.
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.
If I put myself in the shoes of someone who listens to and enjoys rap/hip-hop music, is a soccer enthusiast, or has tattoos, I would take the original comment as offensive. The main point could have been made without disparaging remarks.
> 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.
From an evolutionary perspective, I agree. In ancient times, this trait must have been really important for survival. But in our modern society, we are past that point, and the way we communicate and perpetuate stereotypes can have detrimental effects on interactions between different groups within our society, so even if it's still useful in some contexts, we should take it with caution.
From "Evolutionary Approaches to Stereotyping and Prejudice" [1]:
> "An evolutionary approach thus (a) seriously considers the possibility that prejudices, stereotyping, stereotypes, and discrimination are in some aspects evolved adaptations, like the inclination to avoid dangerous animals."
> "For instance, individuals inclined to avoid predatory beasts were more likely than those without this inclination to survive such encounters, thereby increasing the likelihood they would successfully reproduce. To the extent that this avoidance inclination had a genetic component, and that the benefits of avoiding such animals existed for a long enough period of time, modern humans would come to be characterized by this avoidance adaptation and the cognitive and emotional inclinations causally linked to it."
The "we are past that point" remark refers to the fact that in our modern society we are no longer subject to "dangerous animals" or "predatory beasts" in our daily lives, in the literal sense.
You think humans didn't evolve against dangerous humans? Even discounting physical violence (ridiculous notion), you still have scammers and con artists who can ruin your entire life.
Evolution is a genetic process that favors the traits and characteristics that enhance an organism's ability to survive and reproduce in its specific environment. To say that 'pacific' humans evolved against 'dangerous' humans, or the other way around, would require much reasearch and consideration. Not to say that evolution is a very slow process, it operates on a timescale that spans millions of years.
Yeah thanks for defining evolution, very helpful. Why do elks have horns? You think intrasexual competition never existed? You think inter family and inter tribal fights never happened? You think violence doesn't happen today? That humans don't try to fuck each other over today? To put it nicely, delusional.
Please do refrain from this conversation because you have missed the plot completely. To point out just how bad your reading comprehension is, I am not gish galloping, I am very very obviously asking rhetorical questions.
93 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 148 ms ] threadThis is the countersignaling phase:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Countersignaling
Not to mention the Jarvis Cocker fascination: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxhQiiNJG74
If you like the Pulp (original AFAICT) version, you have to listen to this cover by Cap'n Kirk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St8FtbzH_JE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ainyK6fXku0
Interesting theory.
Would you care to provide a couple of historical examples?
My guesses - this is about (a) inequality reaching a breaking point, where non-elites are starting to reject the social contract, making elite signaling dangerous, and (b) that elites at that moment don't have enough justification for their elevated status (mystification, misrecognition, etc)
And by that I mean a revolutionary people's party had replaced a corrupt elected government with a divine monarchy.
(I don't think I need to describe the wonders that did for equality in the Roman state. Archeological record indicates when barbarians conquered Roman lands, the nutrition of the lower classes often improved. But for some reason those same lower classes that had destroyed the republic never complained about inequality in imperial times.)
This route makes sense to me; I do think the deal has been getting worse and worse lately, and periodic renegotiation is required to keep things running properly.
... Wait, Caligula? That was some four centuries before the Western empire bit the dust, only a few decades after the _creation_ of the empire.
I mean, I know people love blaming absolutely everything for the collapse of the Roman Empire, but delayed action of four centuries feels like pushing it.
If that's it, then you could've been clearer.
https://nypost.com/2019/08/17/luxury-beliefs-are-the-latest-...
> This article may document a neologism or protologism in such a manner as to promote it. (October 2023)
Read the article if you don't like the wiki page.
Braverman got fired for being right. Sunak is weak.
I suspect I may be part of Dr. Henderson's "elite", but since I follow[0] these idealistic viewpoints as well as promoting them, and in order to avoid the Lie Direct and stick with the Retort Courteous[1]: having read the fine article my opinion is otherwise.
[0] to the point of having voted with my feet to live in a better society than the States had, and (to judge from the news) has.
[1] see As You Like It V:iv
(households) I support a society where —as in the US of the last century in which I grew up— a single working parent suffices to support a household.
(religion) I support a society which has its own intrinsic solidarity, without needing the sort of middlemen who "love to pray standing ... in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men."
(success) I support a society where a good education —in trades as well as professions— is available even to those who have been so unwise as to pick the wrong parents.
(racism) I support a society where, sure, there's always some ethnicity on the bottom rungs, but at least it changes every generation as the old bottom rungs assimilate. (Over the last half century it's been, in turn, italians, turks, former yugoslavs, former warsaw pact, and now I guess north africans?)
Fortunately we don't have "high crime neighbourhoods" in the US sense — I think there are several obvious reasons why not, but implementing them in the US would require not only structural changes, but probably also constitutional amendment. (having seen what happened to the ERA in the Old Country, I'm not holding my breath)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pardoner%27s_Tale
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
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.
Am I missing your point?
The paper seems to be angling at the former while equating the two in class-terms and I think that is where it falls flat, the behaviours, shopping habits, and pastimes of the socially elite don't appear to have changed much (speaking anecdotally of course) but if assessed in terms of the meritocratic elite then yes obviously tastes have changed because the two groups are divergent when we look at trends in appointment to positions favoured by Who's Who when deciding who to include.
That last sentence is a bit of a run-on but I think it roughly conveys what I'm saying.
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.
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.
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...
You can't decouple Princess Di from the kelly green or from retro 90s pop culture, whether you're a hipster who first saw the picture at Middle Child Clubhouse & just liked the vibes or if you were just paying attention to the news at the time. Any time you see the Philly media (social, traditional, even sports talk radio) talk about kelly green, they bring up Diana. It's as reflexive as the Philly Special, pickle juice, 4 & 26, etc. Scroll your socials back to the weekend of the Dolphins game or back to July when the jerseys were announced, and if the algorithms think you're a Philly sports fan, you'll see posts with the People photos & news articles about them (both new and contemporary).
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.
Hunting on horseback has always been elite, because horses have always been an expensive preserve of the elite. But great numbers of country-folk that are far from elite follow the hunt on foot; it's especially a Boxing Day custom. Well, at least that was the case 30-40 years ago - things may have changed. As far as fishing goes, coarse fishing in canals and so on has deep working-class roots. It's fly-fishing for salmon and trout that was (and remains) the preserve of landed gentry and their guests/customers.
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.
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.
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3TT1VE8Jq0
It's a great reading. I read it in preparation for my first vacation in London ;)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_Paris_and_Lond...
I found the London part rather ho-hum in comparison, altho YMMV.
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.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Turchin
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 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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
From an evolutionary perspective, I agree. In ancient times, this trait must have been really important for survival. But in our modern society, we are past that point, and the way we communicate and perpetuate stereotypes can have detrimental effects on interactions between different groups within our society, so even if it's still useful in some contexts, we should take it with caution.
Citation needed.
> "An evolutionary approach thus (a) seriously considers the possibility that prejudices, stereotyping, stereotypes, and discrimination are in some aspects evolved adaptations, like the inclination to avoid dangerous animals."
> "For instance, individuals inclined to avoid predatory beasts were more likely than those without this inclination to survive such encounters, thereby increasing the likelihood they would successfully reproduce. To the extent that this avoidance inclination had a genetic component, and that the benefits of avoiding such animals existed for a long enough period of time, modern humans would come to be characterized by this avoidance adaptation and the cognitive and emotional inclinations causally linked to it."
The "we are past that point" remark refers to the fact that in our modern society we are no longer subject to "dangerous animals" or "predatory beasts" in our daily lives, in the literal sense.
[1] https://bpb-us-e2.wpmucdn.com/faculty.sites.uci.edu/dist/1/8...
PS: I will refrain from continuing this conversation since I detect sarcarm and a passive agressive tone in your message. Thanks.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop