Abstract
A careful search of recently published books on Western middle classes reveals two different themes and related tones. One is the historical discovery of the emergence of the middle class in Europe and America from the late eighteenth century, and the other is the current depiction of today’s middle classes in the West. The historical search is charged by optimism and assurance when exploring the birth and growth of the first generation of such a new class, while the current portrayal is colored by pessimism and skepticism as witness to the falling and decline of this class after more than 200 years of its existence.
The purpose of this new book by Simon Stewart is a rather moderate one. Though Stewart does intend to look for the historical origins as well as to sketch the current situations of the English middle classes, he is more keen to characterize the middle classes in different distinguishable types in terms of culture and taste. Also, the author dismisses Beck’s decline-of-class argument and Gunn and Bell’s middle class-in-decline narrative by asserting that the middle class could still be able to retain the distinction and dominance over other lower classes and maintain their class position as a prestigious and favorably positioned social group. The middle classes, as repeatedly argued by the author, do not constitute a cohesive and homogeneous middle class; instead, they are forming diverse and dominant social groups able to deploy, store, and defend large volumes of various forms of capital, keeping their strong position vis-à-vis others.
In the first three chapters, the author cited abundant and sometimes excessively detailed related research literature to portray the historic rise and its relevant institutional context, salient cultural features, and lifestyles of the middle classes in Britain since their heyday in the 1870s to the early 1990s. Many readers will find the synthesized materials a useful and instructive aid toward familiarity with current theorizing on the middle class.
Following Raymond Williams’ definition of culture as “a whole way of life” and Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of “taste,” in Chapters Four and Five, the author then proceeds to present the findings of his primary research of middle-class “cultural practices and taste” in Horsham, West Sussex in the heart of the English home-counties. In fact, the materials and analysis in those two chapters are the centerpiece of the whole book, which is really focused on the characterization of middle-class culture in today’s British class structure. The cultural profiling of his 100 respondents, who were an audience of theatregoers, is interesting and not difficult to appreciate. The “silver disposition” is the term used in the two chapters by the author to describe the Horsham middle-class cultural practice and taste for plays, concerts, music, books, and food. They are middle-aged, affluent, and still preoccupied with that which is established and conventional. Their taste for culture does not exactly qualify as highbrow, nor can it be classified as only middlebrow. Rather their cultural practices are a mixture of the classics and the popular or light—the avant-garde is not their cup of tea.
The cultural practices of the middle-class Englishmen under analysis swing between highbrow and middlebrow, yet the Horsham residents are anxious and fearful about the eventual loss of countryside due to vast urban developments. From the description provided by the author, Horsham middle-class cultural life is not novelty or excitement seeking; they are “more likely to participate in cultural practices that are embedded in the legitimate and a sense of institutionalized prestige that has accrued over time” (p. 135). Finally, by practicing certain cultural activities, they are conscious about distinguishing themselves from those pursuing popular culture such as watching television and eating fast food.
Protest is also a cultural practice of the middle-class tradition of radicalism, as previously illustrated by Gunn and Bell. In this book, the author coins another term of “new middle class passions” to champion and protect country life, including hunting for sport as a collective expression of their “defensive formation.” In Chapter Six, the final chapter, such middle-class protests in which defensive formations are articulated and enacted by them are viewed by the author as another means of distinguishing their prestigious position from those beneath them. The rural is presented by the protest movement as a seat of virtue, a source of middle-class moral construct. An English middle-class valuation indeed.
Having carefully read the whole book, a serious reviewer would have the impression that it is a collection of six separate essays rather than a coherent book with six integrated chapters. As already pointed out earlier, this book heavily cited much existing literature to substantiate the author’s claims on English middle-class cultural practices. As a consequence, the original empirical data and their analysis tends to be too light and sometimes falls short of sophistication and articulation. Nevertheless, from a comparative perspective, this book does present a useful insight into the growing analysis of middle-class culture in the non-Western context, such as Asia.