What class are you?

I suspect that, in practice, my family operated within a mix of working class and middle class mores.

Both my parents never went to college, not even for one course. My dad worked in a trade (electrician & carpenter) and my mom was essentially in a clerk-type position, but both of them worked their asses off and saved like crazy to get to where we are today. Mom and I live in a nice neighborhood (I pay the mortgage on the house and she pays the property taxes, btw), own two vehicles (bought used about three years ago), have traveled before, and watch a lot of cable TV. I have a bachelor's degree, which I'm currently not using, and am going in for another one (which I'm paying for). If it were a case of just identifying myself in terms of American distinctions, I'd say solidly middle class, but I do recognize that "middle class" holds a completely different meaning in the UK so that may be a misleading thing to state.

Normally, though, I don't really think of "class" except to think of what kind of neighborhood I first lived in and how it's totally different to the one I live in now. The neighborhood I started off life in was filled with families whose fathers were all electricians, plumbers, carpenters, or general construction workers, and whose mothers were all clerks, LVNs (nurses), or bank tellers. The neighborhood I currently live in is right next to a huge complex of hospitals and clinics, so the houses around here are sought after by nurses and doctors, and lots of people in this neighborhood have graduated from college. It was a bit of a culture shock moving here, but I've gotten used to it.

The HS I attended, btw, attracted a wide range of different socioeconomic classes, from the very poor to the very wealthy, so I also got used to dealing with people who were different from me over there. Eventually I just viewed all of us as just... people, you know? Ok, well we were all teenage girls, so yeah, teenage girls, to be exact, but just people nonetheless.

(I don't know if any of my reasoning there applies to the British perception at all.)

i have an upper-middle class degree and a middle-class income. which is why i'm so pissed off these days.

What the heck is one of them?

My father's got a degree in political science, but he's worked roofing/construction since the late-60s. Since the mid-70s he and my grandfather have run their own company, but the current employees consist of them, me when I'm not in class and a useless ex-hippie.

My mom graduated from high school, but never went to college. She's worked various office jobs - retail buyer, general manager for a local chain, etc. - never made more than $12/hour.

Granparents: school teacher, aircraft parts salesman, railway clerk, housewife. Not university educated. First language English.

Parents: Librarian, College principal. Both university educated, both published writers. Upper middle class.

Self: university educated. Upper middle class. Impoverished 'man of letters' travelling a lot but owning no property.

On the whole I'd say nobody in my family ever made much money. Our class status rests on our being 'cultivated' rather than 'well off'. My parents live in higher style than my brother, sister or me, largely because they got on the property ladder at a time when houses were extremely cheap in Scotland. Also I think they were more ambitious, materially, and worked harder. My generation seems to be putting more emphasis on experience and quality of life than on possessions and status.

However, I did go to public (UK - that's private to the US-ers I believe) school, albeit on a scholarship. I am the only member of my family ever to get a university degree. Being the poor kid in the rich kids school made me try to be ridiculously working class to ensure that I never got like them. I have no airs and graces, and have no truck with those that do. I drive a crap car, have a job that's probably beneath me but pays the bills, and live in an ex-council house.

Oh, and I absolutely (personally) concur with Momus' last paragraph, from the bit where parents reside on the Costa del Sol having been on the property ladder in Scotland at exactly the right time, and that possessions and status don't matter to me. I'm not sure how much the latter is a generational thing - it seems to be all about the bling for most folk round these parts (West Central Scotland, not ILX).

Then again, I do wonder if we've just changed the definition of 'status' and are just as obsessed with it. I would never drive a Volvo and hunt, shoot and fish with 'the right people' like my dad does, but I set a lot of store by 'cool' as I define it -- collaborating on Hypo's new album and writing for Vice, for instance. Are those just as obviously class markers as wearing green wellies and wearing a Barber jacket?

I mean, at one point in the 90s it turns out that my dad is fishing the Tweed with Oliver Hoare, 'the queen's banker', and I'm in Paris making pop music, and Oliver's son Simon arrives in Paris to set up a new pop label called Big Cheese. My dad hectors me to call him up, and the world's most embarrassing phone call ensues: 'Hello, is that Simon Hoare? My father fishes with your father on the Tweed, and it seems we're both in Paris making pop music.' (I never did meet the guy. His label specialised in 'rare groove' and I was making J-Pop.)

But my point is a serious one, and it's based on the idea that what Pierre Bourdieu defined as 'cultural capital' in the 1960s -- the culture people embrace to distinguish them from other people, and to betoken all the educational and material differences between them -- has morphed in the postmodern period into 'subcultural capital': hipness or cool. There's an illusion of classlessness there -- because we all listen to pop now, whereas in the past there were the bourgeois listening to classical and pop was for the proles -- but in fact class endures, just with new signifiers.

Class for ilXors may be more a question of your definition of cool than of whether you hold your knife and fork the right way, but in the end it's all etiquette, and your taste probably does still relate quite closely to your income and your educational qualifications.

Take Friendster. It's a synthetic social network keyed not to what you earn or what degree you have but to what music, films and TV you like. It then pegs you into blocs of people with similar taste. Now, is anyone reckless enough to assert that class does not exist on Friendster? Of course it exists. It's just encoded in taste. (Not just who you like, but your way of liking them -- ie it's more classy to like Michael Jackson ironically than to like him sincerely.)

Friendster looks like a way to construct new classes, new relationships between people based on taste rather than status. It looks like an attempt to leave traditional class behind. In fact it's just a new way of encoding old stratifications. I'm sure you'd find that the Bjork-loving Friendsters earn more than the Britney-loving Friendsters. They also probably have higher qualifications, a more healthy diet and better life expectancy.

mei: What the heck is one of them?

a Juris Doctorate. which, once upon a time, would have been a clear upper/upper-middle class marker in the USA. but nowadays means that you're just as likely to end up middle-class. as i'm finding out the hard way!

'Pierre Bourdieu developed the notion of cultural capital to explain the cultural assets one can acquire within society.  Cultural capital can be described as ‘what one knows’ which, together with economic capital (what one has) and social capital (who one knows) form one’s overall symbolic capital, that is, the total power, status and authority one attains as a member of society.  This ultimately determines ones place in the hierarchy of social structure.

Due to the fact that cultural capital resources are socio-culturally determined, cultural capital can exist entirely independently of economic capital.

Bearing in mind the notion of cultural capital, the concept of subcultural capital can be developed.  Subcultural capital would operate in a similar manner to cultural capital in that it contributes to one’s overall status (symbolic capital) within a particular subculture.  The specifics of exactly what is entailed in that form of capital would depend on the types of knowledge given precedence within a particular subculture. In general, this knowledge would be more eclectic and subversive than that embraced as cultural capital due to the fact that subcultures usually exist as a force of resistance against the dominant culture.

Pierre Bourdieu defines ‘taste’ as: “the acquired disposition to differentiate and appreciate”.  (Bourdieu, 467).  However, he stresses that one of the imperatives of having good taste is that it appears natural as opposed to acquired.

Sarah Thornton argues that, similar to Bourdieu’s concept of taste, the taste required for the acquisition of subcultural capital must be learned in an unconscious manner, in order that it appear natural.  Thornton calls this type of acquisition ‘embodied understanding.’ (Mackie, Lecture notes, 1).

Furthermore, she argues that taste as subcultural capital is articulated largely through the binary opposition between the concepts of ‘underground’ versus ‘mainstream’. ‘Mainstream’ is a term used to reflect the taste choices embraced by the masses whereas ‘underground’ refers to the taste of that which is unprocessed by dominant cultural influences and which is also often a reflection of a direct opposition to the values and ideals deemed important by the mainstream of society.'

My parents were solidly working class (her dad was a union worker at a factory, his dad was a sporadically-employed drunk) but for some reason that I've never been able to figure out, my mom decided to work her way through college to get a teaching degree. She really picked up the ways of the middle class there, and then she got pregnant with me and married my dad shortly after completing her degree.

I had a vagrant childhood of living out of vans, mobile homes, and motels wherever my dad could find jobs, until I started school and my dad had to find jobs that lasted a year or more. (He was a telephone repairman to begin with, and as he learned more about engineering, his job options became greater--he never received a degree.)

Here's where the cultural capital comes in--my mom always found out when the free days for museums were so we could go together, or we would go to the dress rehearsals for the ballet. She worked hard to figure out the best schools for me to go to, even if it meant a long commute for my dad.

When my parents had saved enough to buy a house, we ended up settling down in an isolated town near the Mexican border in Arizona. My parents both had jobs working indoors, and the house was not a trailer. This, along with coming into a poor school system with a good education, suddenly made me very upper-crusty. I wasn't the daughter of a doctor or lawyer, but I was right up there. The other kids in the honors classes didn't understand why I dated the Mexican boys whose parents worked in the fields.

I got a scholarship for college, went to the midwest and entered a world where nearly everyone was richer than I had conceived of. Between that and the lack of Mexican food/boys, I felt like I had moved to a different country.

i was brought up working class. my dad worked on the pest destruction board shootin' rabbits and earning a pittance, but he loved the work and was devastated when the pest destruction board was scrapped and he was made redundant. he then spent a few years in and out of work and unemployment, before recently getting a secure job in a factory. he works very hard. he was always an angry man and he brought me up to have a healthy disrespect for authority (haha except for HIS authority, of course).

my mum was a traditional home-maker. we lived out in the country and she didn't know how to drive so she had little in the way of independence. shelooked for friendship amongst the neighbourhood wives who never really accepted her because we weren't as well off as them - farmers are very hard working but they are also TOTAL SNOBS. mum raised four children which wasn't easy with only dad's income, but she was quite resourceful: made her own preserves, jams, baked bread and cakes and biscuits and sewed a lot of beautiful clothes for me and my sister. in the last 10 years she has learned how to drive and now she has a job working in a plant nursery, shes the queen of gardening so its right up her alley. things are a lot easier for my parents now cos they only have one child left at home to provide for now with two incomes.

Alone I'd be middle class. (neglecting to apply scaling in proportion to my age)

My parents, however, both worked the sorts of jobs that meant they were about two paychecks away from poverty and I attribute this to not going to college or in my dad's case, not bothering to turn up when enrolled. He is not a particularily hard worker, unlike my mom who works bloody hard but blethers on about it as if she'd like a medal for it. She owns her business and it is in many ways, a cushy, nice little number.

I was always made to feel, during my teenaged years which followed my parents' divorce, that we were absolutely on the breadline, totally working poor, and then went to a college where a significant amount of the students had trust funds and had gone to boarding school, so there's a big part of me that feels more working-class than others with my education and career oppportunities. Also there's a part of me roughly the same size as that which feels more cultured/well-brought-up than people from the Soccer Mom wing of the American middle class.

My parents came from parents who were immigrants or the children of immigrants who through business or professions made I don't know how much money but probably enough to be upper middle class. For instance, one of my great aunts, born around 1900, was a lawyer. Both of my parents went to medical school and became professors who now do scientific research and teach med school. Between saving and buying an apartment for very little money that's now probably worth a lot, they're rich as far as America goes, though probably not what rich people would consider rich. I grew up in the not-quite-as-wealthy section of what was then I think (and may still be?) the richest zip code in America, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. I went to arguably the best private school in New York City (though by best I mean its academics; it's not necessarily the most socially prestigious), the population of which was 40-60% Jewish. The parents of many of the people I went to school with (Rupert Murdoch, Larry Tisch, etc, among them) made more if not much more money than my parents did and had much more social capital than my parents who aren't much interested in socializing with people other than those they work with. Cultural and intellectual capital was valued highly (we had season tickets to the Metropolitan Opera when I was a little kid, if that counts), though much of it I had to develop on my own as pop culture largely doesn't exist for my parents.

I'm now living in NYC working in my first real job, a professional one that puts me in the top tax bracket, though my Upper East Side apt alone eats almost half of my post-tax earnings. On the cultural and social capital fronts, I'm largely a mini version of my parents. If class is now cool, I don't have much status.

Is class really about income and wealth, or is it about the amount of power (economic and otherwise) that some people have over others and the lack of power that those others have as a result?

I suppose we've fluctuated between the third and fourth quintiles throughout my life, though at the moment we're closer to the third quintile. I hope to one day be able to earn enough on my own to land in the fourth quintile, no help at all. I would love to be in the lower limit of the top 5 percent, though. Maybe with enough work and hustling, this can be done.

And... good point on your last post. I suppose on that end I feel solidly middle class, right smack in the middle, because I've known just as many people around here who are wealthier than I am as I've known people around here who are poorer than I am. I had HS classmates who took winter skiing vacations to Vail and Aspen, and at the same time also had HS classmates whose families relied on food stamps and donations from Goodwill. So yeah, regular middle class.

my mother's side are descendants of portuguese wine merchants who settled in the UK and the British Caribbean sometime during the late 18th/early 19th centuries. i don't know that much about them, and the "official" story is that they so settled for business reasons. i wonder if there's another -- and more interesting -- reason; why else would someone leave nice, sunny and warm Portugal for dreary and rainy England? :-)

Maybe I'm more middle-class myself - I have a 'professional-class' job, a degree, read a broadsheet newspaper daily, and so on. It was always assumed that I would stay at school to do A-Levels, then go on to university, but it was never very clear *why*, and I never had any career plan of any kind - university was the end in itself. My generation - me and my two older cousins - were the first people in my family to go away to university at 18, although my dad graduated from the Open University in his early 30s.

mom's side = scottish immigrants to the late 18th century railroad industry in the american south, catholics, the family then split between agrarian and university (liberal arts/humanities) work. middle class values from working class money.

dad's side = very lower class, very poor, my dad one of the few from his family to upwardly escape destitution via working class labor. self-made, started his own business 15 years ago which is now very successful.

myself = self-financed education, middle-mgmt job, cultural dilettantism (travel, arts), saving money for eventual real estate purchase = middle class to the core.

Me, I refuse to be defined by this concept.

That's right: I have no class. :)

I'd say I'm upper-middle. This is because my parents (British doctors' daughter, left school at 16, Italian engineer's son, left school at 14) did really well for themselves through their own ability and hard work, and have given me throughout my upbringing a very comfortable-to-privileged lifestyle. I'm private school and university educated, own my own house and sometimes shop at Waitrose. I am essentially uneasy, though, as little of my status has, as yet, been earned by me.

My dad is retired now (61), used to be an office manager/accounts guy at a clay company (not ECC, WBB, if that means anythign to anyone). He took early retirement when they relocated to Chester from Newton Abbott last year. He was probably on £26k ish before he retired, but I don't really know exactly.

My eldest brother (35 in October, A Levels, Radiohead inspiration) is a postman and has been since he was 18. Rents. Lives with a cat and 600 DVDs. My other brother (33, A Levels) now sells wheelchairs and assorted other stuff to old people / disabled people, but used to be a sales rep for a record company and was doing very well at it but quit, sold his house and moved back to Exeter from Bristol when his relationship collapsed 3 years ago. He's now on less money, with no company car, nowhere near the perks and can't afford to buy his own house.

I'm 24, earn £12k working in a library, have a decent BA from a shoddy university, still live with my parents. When pushed I claim to be "two generations out of the mines" in a funny voice. As my family comes from Sheffield this probably isn't that accurate though, as we're more likely two generations out of the steelworks. In fact, make that one generation.

And me? I'm thankful as hell to live in the 21st century. I have two job interviews today, and I'm listening to Cannonball Adderley play "Autumn Leaves" because it's the first day of autumn. I have a wonderful girlfriend and two cute cats and a high speed internet connection. I don't like to think about where I came from. It's depressing.

As an aside, I've never been on holiday cos we could never afford it.

Parents - mother works as a local civil servant, did her MA as a mature student, her boyfriend is a social worker. My dad and stepmum run a country pub.

Me - journalist, but broke, BA degree.

I'd say middle on balance, although went through a pocket of poverty (ish) after parents' divorce.

this is a good description of my extended family as well ... like lily tomlin-as-phone-company-operator used to say, we've got everything from kings and queens to the scum of the earth.

and yes to whoever upthread said that wealth is relative ... to grow up upper middle-class in Princeton, NJ meant that you were poor by that community's standards.