If you are reading this you are probably some kind of upper class. You may not be part of the elite but you are one of the newly privileged: rich in culture and contacts. You don’t need a share portfolio nor even your own home. As an ArtsHub reader it’s a fair bet you have cultural capital, now recognised as a powerful class delineator, alongside economic and social capital.
The British class system – and its shadow forms across the former British colonies – has long divided the world into upper, middle and working class, categories that combined your social status, education and income. Upper class aristocrats and their nouveau riche followers bought opera season passes and lived lavishly. The middle class saved for a rare night out at a big show and paid off a mortgage. The working class sweated for rent money and went to the pub.
But the neat correlation between education and culture on the one hand and income on the other has broken down. Plumbers can earn more than professors and there are plenty of software millionaires who haven’t read a book since they left school.
Now British sociologists and economists have acknowledged the importance of culture in developing a new model for understanding class. The model takes account of three kinds of capital: economic, social and cultural. Economic capital is measured in dollar terms but social capital is about whom you know and the groups you belong to. Cultural capital is about your education and consumption of culture: a degree in English literature, proficiency on the piano or a penchant for gallery browsing bumps you up the social scale.
The new model is based on a study of class in Britain run by BBC Lab UK with Professor Mike Savage from the London School of Economics and Professor Fiona Devine from the University of Manchester. The findings were published in the Sociology Journal this week. The authors identify seven classes, which the BBC summarised as:
- Elite – a small group very rich in social, cultural and economic capital.
- Established middle class –a very large group, moderately wealthy on all three levels with the highest social capital and second highest cultural capital after the elite.
- Technical middle class – wealthy economically but poor in social and cultural capital.
- New affluent workers – young, socially and culturally rich but with only average levels of economic wealth.
- Traditional working class – older, low social, cultural and economic wealthy but better off than some other groups, partly because they live in established accommodation.
- Emergent service workers – young, urban, wealthy in social and cultural capital but poor economically.
- Precariat, or precarious proletariat – the poorest, most deprived class, scoring low on all measures.
For the arts industry in Australia the new model presents an opportunity to understand both where arts workers fit in and how different sectors of the audience approach culture. While class has always been more fluid in Australia than in Britain the concept of cultural capital transcends borders.
The recognition that cultural capital is an individual asset which people can use to improve their lives was pioneered by Pierre Bourdieu in the 1980s and is now an accepted metric in cultural studies. Bourdieu argued that children learn their cultural attitudes from their parents and their cultural knowledge and abilities are a key factor in the social position they obtain.
Professor Tony Bennett, now in the Institute for Culture and Society at the University of Western Sydney, was the lead author of Culture, Class, Distinction, research which the British class survey draws on. He told ArtsHub that what was original in the survey was the significance of cultural knowledge, in its broadest sense, as a way of defining position in society.
‘Knowledge of culture has become a significant resource, particularly for people in professional and managerial positions. Their cultural capital is significant even if they may not have the economic capital – often inherited – or the social connections to match the cultural tastes and abilities they have acquired, usually through the education system. The survey shows that this is less true for those at the very top of the class hierarchy. These have high levels of economic, social and cultural capital. But it is the focus on cultural capital that most distinguishes those in professional and managerial positions.’
Professor Bennett said the position of artist in the class structure was unusual because a successful artistic career sometimes involves calculations that invert the usual logic of economic capital. ‘The arts economy is a bit of an anti-economy at times because an artistic career may require an artist to distance themselves from conventional economic logic to build a distinctive niche of artistic cultural capital that will pay long-term – and sometimes posthumous – economic dividends. It’s a very risky kind of path to wealth and fortune.’
But while you wait for posthumous glory, the arts you consume and the work you do as a creative or an arts manager can give you social status even if it doesn’t improve your credit card limit. Applied to the Australian arts scene, the British class model helps us understand why our incomes and interests feel so our of step. In practical terms, you probably slot in somewhere here:
Elite:
-
Arts sector: Nicole Kidman, Cate Blanchett & Geoffrey Rush; wealthy business & philanthropy partners & board members
Audience: premium seat ticket-holders; art auction buyers; cultural tourists
- Established middle class
Sector: senior arts managers, marketing & development people; arts public servants; employees of creative institutions; artists whose creative practice is sustained by a partner or parent’s middle-class income.
Audience: most subscribers and institutional members, the regulars
- Technical middle class
Sector: not applicable
Audience: rarely but receptive to arts delivered digitally, mainly gaming and film.
- New affluent workers
Sector: creative entrepreneurs and producers, artists with portfolio careers; television series actors; successful (or cashed-up) creatives
Audience: walk-up ticket buyers; festival gold cardholders; strong supporters of independent arts;
- Traditional working class
Sector: not applicable
Audience: big night out; musicals; blockbuster visual arts; film; popular music
- Emergent service workers
Sector: community arts workers; casuals and part-timers; front of house; creatives who support themselves with secondary service occupations like bar work.
Audience: independent productions; free and cheap events; occasional visual arts buyers even though they don’t have much money.
- Precariat
Sector: not applicable
Audience: by definition these people are not regularly engaged with the arts: if they were they would have some cultural capital to pull them up the social ladder. But they are the target of many community arts programs for social change, youth and education.
The new model is likely to be welcomed by leading arts figures including Arts Council chairman Rupert Myer, who could not be contacted for this article, but has spoken to ArtsHub about the need to recognise the value of creative culture.
But the model does not tell the whole story. Cultural economist Professor David Throsby has spent much of his career identifying the economic value of culture. As an economist, he is uncomfortable with the use of cultural capital to analyse the class system.
‘The very word class gives me the shivers. It seems to conjure up on the one hand the snootiness of the upper class and on the other hand the sense of people being marginalised and have power exerted over them. I don’t think pigeon-holing people is terribly helpful. We should be looking at where there is economic inequality and where there is cultural inequality and how that can be addressed.’
Below: a traditional view of the British class system by John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett.
