Aren't the sociologists behaving in a similar manner to the elites they are studying? The latter shift their norms/interests - sensibly enough in a more democractic society you might think - to legitimate (or disguise) their continuing dominance. The sociologists shift their locus of study to cultural preferences to discover what leftish sociologists always discover that there is an unmovable elite, permanently in power, who are, as the book title says, Born to Rule.
I have some skin in this game. I come from an uber-elite background but then spent much of my early adult life trying to disguise it in my leftist milieu. I therefore have a sensitive nose for class inauthenticity. Indeed, I did a BBC Point of View talk about it a few years ago entitled (I think) False Outsider Syndrome, prompted by a David Baddiel interview in which he described himself as lower middle class despite having been to Haberdashers Aske the north London private school and Cambridge (OK his father might have been lower middle class but he sure isn't).
The 1960s is surely key here (as Ian said), and not in a bad way. There was a kind of cultural democratisation partly thanks to pop/youth culture but also television. Growing up upper middle class in 1960s/70s Kensington I shared broadly the same music, TV programmes, food, clothing, as my partner Kate who grew up on a council estate in Pimlico (I had fancier holidays and fewer money worries). A generation or two earlier that would not have been the case.
You didn't mention the Thomas Picketty distinction between the Brahmin cultural and educational elite leaning to the left and the Merchant elite leaning to the right, at least economically. But if the story of the post-1980s decades is that the right broadly won the economic argument and the left won the social and cultural argument then the latter victory has been more complete than the former. The Brahmins beat the Merchants. Look at the size of the state, the levels of public spending and tax, the continuing expansion (maybe until right now) of the welfare state. Then consider Brahmin domination of the BBC, schools/universities etc
The centre-left riposte (including I assume of the two sociologists) would be but look at inequality and slower social mobility. Both are complex and messy. Inequality in the UK has not shifted much since the Thatcher reforms of the 1980s if anything it has fallen in recent years, certainly for the 90% excluding the two extremes (and we remain somewhat more unequal than most European countries because of a bigger financial sector and more single parent families). Social mobility is, it is now well established, significantly determined by room at the top, and for several decades in the last half of the last century there was a rapid expansion of professional/managerial jobs (now accounting for around one third of the total), an expansion that has slowed in recent years.
But there remains more everyday mobility and meritocracy than most sociologists acknowledge, Peter Saunders being the only prominent heretic. Universities now function like the old grammar schools, at least the decent ones do. And far more children from middle and lower income backgrounds go to college (half of all school leavers) than used to go to grammar schools that were always heavily middle class.
These things are hard to measure but one thing that sociologists could more easily quantify is the relative openness of elites. The assumption of Born to Rule appears to be that the elite is not very open with the same families handing on their privileges to their mockney accented children. But I wonder whether this is missing the wood for the trees. To take just two key institutions, Oxbridge and Parliament. The proportion of the privately educated - one indisputable measure of privilege - in both places has fallen sharply in recent decades. Even in the last Parliament far less than half of Tory MPs were privately educated and the total was, I think, around one third. With the big Labour majority I suspect the total is now less than one quarter. And given that the 6-7% privately educated figure always quoted significantly underestimates those who have spent some significant period of their education in a private education (which could be as high as 15%) Parliament is now probably only slightly skewed private. And similarly with Oxbridge, the proportion of those state educated is now about 75% at Cambridge and a bit less at Oxford, now higher than in the grammar school heyday of the 50s and 60s. The overwhelming majority are middle class in its many different versions, but then so is the country as a whole.
Apols (if you've got this far!), longer than I intended. Stimulating discussions. Keep up the good work.
No need to apologise, David, an honour to have you here given how deeply you've reflected on these themes and written on them over the years. This is a fascinating commentary.
Thanks I think I agree with all this. Regarding private education - we do use it as a marker of privilege in this country, and it is, but we also simply refuse to accept that it might actually provide a better education and thus be a useful attribute for our 'elites'. No wonder they are increasingly mediocre. It's like entering a motor race and refusing to use a car with one of those snobby turbo-chargers.
Yes that is a genuinely shocking thought, some of our problems may reflect the fact that too little of the elite have an elite private education! After all the top public schools are now about one third internationals and are now too expensive for the ordinary upper middles.
This is not meant to be shade on James Marriot particularly whose writing I enjoy, but I read his whole column expecting any minute now he'd move onto discuss the mediocrities that have leading roles in Britain's media, who share some of the blame for this problem being "baked into modern life"
The Class Ceiling by Friedman is also interesting for the case studies (similar to the interviews you mention and there is also a general dismissiveness in the book to the idea that some of the social/cultural barriers identified act as meritocratic mechanisms in that they have real value in professional contexts). Anyway, some of the TV producer snobbery on show in the book is particularly amusing.
I haven't read Born to Rule - the talk at LSE was a bit off-putting, as was the concept of using Who's Who which seemed likely to pander to their prejudices and only capture a narrow definition of elite, although I understand why the publication is a useful benchmark given it allows for a time series to be put together.
It's actually a more interesting book than you might imagine simply because of all the data they present. You don't necessarily have to buy their take to find it worthwhile.
BTW while I think life is more complicated than Friedman's take, my worry about Who's Who isn't the spin on what to conclude from it but that it might be an anachronistic way of approaching the 'elite' in that the criteria may only capture one sort of status (as per David Cameron's view that there are now a series of different establishments in Britain).
For instance, Demis Hassabis, Greg Jackson, Andy Haldane, and Gina Miller, don't seem to make the cut, but all have arguably been fairly consequential to British life in the recent past. But then, I suppose picking names from a hat like that isn't systematic, which takes me back to your point - I have to read the book to see who does get chosen and what that means (and doesn't mean).
Late comment: I wonder if the conclusion is baked in the question, and if by searching for the differences between elites and "common people", the authors are blind to similarities.
Is it possible that the reason why elites have moved towards pop culture is not about signaling, but that eyebrow culture requires effort, and both elites and everyone else (at least in WEIRD countries) are more reluctant to embrace effort out of traditional obligations?
I would suggest that past elites developed an appreciation for, let's say, classical music as they've become familiar with it, but that they started learning it in the first place for the same reason why they were more likely to volunteer for war: it was expected of them.
Whereas more recently, for whatever social-cultural-"kids nowadays" reason, the new generations of elites and commoners both prefer the frictionless appeal of walking the dog to the commitment required by learning to play violin because it's easier, and not because the former are aping the latter. In that sense, they're more alike than they're different.
The humbling rhetoric of the elite itself can be seen as in part manipulative, and in part as a form of dereliction of the kind of responsibility towards society at large that was the other side of the coin to the privilege.
It's difficult to test for this hypothesis, but if we look at the behaviour of elites in more conservative countries such as in Southeast and East Asia, we see both greater attachment to eyebrow culture and a greater willingness to sacrifice individual preferences to fit with what is expected of them. (Anecdotally, one of the services provided by Private Banks in Singapore to the new rich is induction to classical art, to help them understand what to buy).
Aren't the sociologists behaving in a similar manner to the elites they are studying? The latter shift their norms/interests - sensibly enough in a more democractic society you might think - to legitimate (or disguise) their continuing dominance. The sociologists shift their locus of study to cultural preferences to discover what leftish sociologists always discover that there is an unmovable elite, permanently in power, who are, as the book title says, Born to Rule.
I have some skin in this game. I come from an uber-elite background but then spent much of my early adult life trying to disguise it in my leftist milieu. I therefore have a sensitive nose for class inauthenticity. Indeed, I did a BBC Point of View talk about it a few years ago entitled (I think) False Outsider Syndrome, prompted by a David Baddiel interview in which he described himself as lower middle class despite having been to Haberdashers Aske the north London private school and Cambridge (OK his father might have been lower middle class but he sure isn't).
The 1960s is surely key here (as Ian said), and not in a bad way. There was a kind of cultural democratisation partly thanks to pop/youth culture but also television. Growing up upper middle class in 1960s/70s Kensington I shared broadly the same music, TV programmes, food, clothing, as my partner Kate who grew up on a council estate in Pimlico (I had fancier holidays and fewer money worries). A generation or two earlier that would not have been the case.
You didn't mention the Thomas Picketty distinction between the Brahmin cultural and educational elite leaning to the left and the Merchant elite leaning to the right, at least economically. But if the story of the post-1980s decades is that the right broadly won the economic argument and the left won the social and cultural argument then the latter victory has been more complete than the former. The Brahmins beat the Merchants. Look at the size of the state, the levels of public spending and tax, the continuing expansion (maybe until right now) of the welfare state. Then consider Brahmin domination of the BBC, schools/universities etc
The centre-left riposte (including I assume of the two sociologists) would be but look at inequality and slower social mobility. Both are complex and messy. Inequality in the UK has not shifted much since the Thatcher reforms of the 1980s if anything it has fallen in recent years, certainly for the 90% excluding the two extremes (and we remain somewhat more unequal than most European countries because of a bigger financial sector and more single parent families). Social mobility is, it is now well established, significantly determined by room at the top, and for several decades in the last half of the last century there was a rapid expansion of professional/managerial jobs (now accounting for around one third of the total), an expansion that has slowed in recent years.
But there remains more everyday mobility and meritocracy than most sociologists acknowledge, Peter Saunders being the only prominent heretic. Universities now function like the old grammar schools, at least the decent ones do. And far more children from middle and lower income backgrounds go to college (half of all school leavers) than used to go to grammar schools that were always heavily middle class.
These things are hard to measure but one thing that sociologists could more easily quantify is the relative openness of elites. The assumption of Born to Rule appears to be that the elite is not very open with the same families handing on their privileges to their mockney accented children. But I wonder whether this is missing the wood for the trees. To take just two key institutions, Oxbridge and Parliament. The proportion of the privately educated - one indisputable measure of privilege - in both places has fallen sharply in recent decades. Even in the last Parliament far less than half of Tory MPs were privately educated and the total was, I think, around one third. With the big Labour majority I suspect the total is now less than one quarter. And given that the 6-7% privately educated figure always quoted significantly underestimates those who have spent some significant period of their education in a private education (which could be as high as 15%) Parliament is now probably only slightly skewed private. And similarly with Oxbridge, the proportion of those state educated is now about 75% at Cambridge and a bit less at Oxford, now higher than in the grammar school heyday of the 50s and 60s. The overwhelming majority are middle class in its many different versions, but then so is the country as a whole.
Apols (if you've got this far!), longer than I intended. Stimulating discussions. Keep up the good work.
No need to apologise, David, an honour to have you here given how deeply you've reflected on these themes and written on them over the years. This is a fascinating commentary.
Thanks I think I agree with all this. Regarding private education - we do use it as a marker of privilege in this country, and it is, but we also simply refuse to accept that it might actually provide a better education and thus be a useful attribute for our 'elites'. No wonder they are increasingly mediocre. It's like entering a motor race and refusing to use a car with one of those snobby turbo-chargers.
Yes that is a genuinely shocking thought, some of our problems may reflect the fact that too little of the elite have an elite private education! After all the top public schools are now about one third internationals and are now too expensive for the ordinary upper middles.
Had great fun listening to this! I think the natural next step is for you both to share your own desert island discs and who’s who entries ;-)
I like this idea!
This is not meant to be shade on James Marriot particularly whose writing I enjoy, but I read his whole column expecting any minute now he'd move onto discuss the mediocrities that have leading roles in Britain's media, who share some of the blame for this problem being "baked into modern life"
The Class Ceiling by Friedman is also interesting for the case studies (similar to the interviews you mention and there is also a general dismissiveness in the book to the idea that some of the social/cultural barriers identified act as meritocratic mechanisms in that they have real value in professional contexts). Anyway, some of the TV producer snobbery on show in the book is particularly amusing.
I haven't read Born to Rule - the talk at LSE was a bit off-putting, as was the concept of using Who's Who which seemed likely to pander to their prejudices and only capture a narrow definition of elite, although I understand why the publication is a useful benchmark given it allows for a time series to be put together.
It's actually a more interesting book than you might imagine simply because of all the data they present. You don't necessarily have to buy their take to find it worthwhile.
You're right. I should read it.
BTW while I think life is more complicated than Friedman's take, my worry about Who's Who isn't the spin on what to conclude from it but that it might be an anachronistic way of approaching the 'elite' in that the criteria may only capture one sort of status (as per David Cameron's view that there are now a series of different establishments in Britain).
For instance, Demis Hassabis, Greg Jackson, Andy Haldane, and Gina Miller, don't seem to make the cut, but all have arguably been fairly consequential to British life in the recent past. But then, I suppose picking names from a hat like that isn't systematic, which takes me back to your point - I have to read the book to see who does get chosen and what that means (and doesn't mean).
Late comment: I wonder if the conclusion is baked in the question, and if by searching for the differences between elites and "common people", the authors are blind to similarities.
Is it possible that the reason why elites have moved towards pop culture is not about signaling, but that eyebrow culture requires effort, and both elites and everyone else (at least in WEIRD countries) are more reluctant to embrace effort out of traditional obligations?
I would suggest that past elites developed an appreciation for, let's say, classical music as they've become familiar with it, but that they started learning it in the first place for the same reason why they were more likely to volunteer for war: it was expected of them.
Whereas more recently, for whatever social-cultural-"kids nowadays" reason, the new generations of elites and commoners both prefer the frictionless appeal of walking the dog to the commitment required by learning to play violin because it's easier, and not because the former are aping the latter. In that sense, they're more alike than they're different.
The humbling rhetoric of the elite itself can be seen as in part manipulative, and in part as a form of dereliction of the kind of responsibility towards society at large that was the other side of the coin to the privilege.
It's difficult to test for this hypothesis, but if we look at the behaviour of elites in more conservative countries such as in Southeast and East Asia, we see both greater attachment to eyebrow culture and a greater willingness to sacrifice individual preferences to fit with what is expected of them. (Anecdotally, one of the services provided by Private Banks in Singapore to the new rich is induction to classical art, to help them understand what to buy).