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Social class in the United Kingdom
The social structure of the United Kingdom has historically been highly influenced by the concept of social class, which continues to affect British society today. British society, like its European neighbours and most societies in world history, was traditionally (before the Industrial Revolution) divided hierarchically within a system that involved the hereditary transmission of occupation, social status and political influence. Since the advent of industrialisation, this system has been in a constant state of revision, and new factors other than birth (for example, education) are now a greater part of creating identity in Britain.
Although the country's definitions of social class vary and are highly controversial, most are influenced by factors of wealth, occupation, and education. Until the Life Peerages Act 1958, the Parliament of the United Kingdom was organised on a class basis, with the House of Lords representing the hereditary upper class and the House of Commons representing everybody else. The British monarch is usually viewed as being at the top of the social class structure.
British society has experienced significant change since the Second World War, including an expansion of higher education and home ownership, a shift towards a service-dominated economy, mass immigration, a changing role for women and a more individualistic culture. These changes have had a considerable impact on the social landscape. However, claims that the UK has become a classless society have frequently been met with scepticism. Research has shown that social status in the United Kingdom is influenced by, although separate from, social class.
This change in terminology corresponded to a general decrease in significance ascribed to hereditary characteristics, and increase in the significance of wealth and income as indicators of position in the social hierarchy.
The "class system" in the United Kingdom is widely studied in academia but no definition of the word class is universally agreed to. Some scholars may adopt the Marxist view of class where persons are classified by their relationship to means of production, as owners or as workers, which is the most important factor in that person's social rank. Alternatively, Max Weber developed a three-component theory of stratification under which "a person’s power can be shown in the social order through their status, in the economic order through their class, and in the political order through their party. The biggest current study of social class in the United Kingdom is the Great British Class Survey. Besides these academic models, there are myriad popular explanations of class in Britain. In her work Class, Jilly Cooper quotes a shopkeeper on the subject of bacon: "When a woman asks for back I call her 'madam'; when she asks for streaky I call her 'dear'."
In 1485, virtually all the English men and women were Roman Catholics. All were taught to believe that God created the universe and ordered it and was active in its daily workings. In other words, the world was a physical manifestation of God's will. There was no room for coincidence or accident. Educated English men and women had many ways of describing how the world was supposed to be, most of them metaphorical. One of their favorite metaphors was that of the body politic or viewing their nation as the human body. The king was the head; the aristocracy the arms and shoulders; the tenant farmers and poor the legs and feet, etc. The beauty of this metaphor was that it conveyed that all parts of the body politic contributed equally to the common good but were not equal in status: if the arms or legs attempted to usurp the head, chaos would ensue. This train of thought would later become known as the Great Chain of Being in which all inhabitants of the universe, in hierarchal order, went: God, then Angels, then Man, then Animals, then Plants, then Stones, then the Damned. Each of the ranks were further subdivided into smaller hierarchies. For the category Man, the order, from highest to lowest was; King, nobles, gentlemen, yeomen, husbandmen, cottagers, and laborers.
The United Kingdom never experienced the sudden dispossession of the estates of the nobility, which occurred in much of Europe after the French Revolution or in the early 20th century, the British nobility, in so far as it existed as a distinct social class, integrated itself with those with new wealth derived from commercial and industrial sources more comfortably than in most of Europe. Opportunities resulting from consistent economic growth and the expanding British Empire also enabled some from much poorer backgrounds (generally men who had managed to acquire some education) to rise through the class system.
The historian David Cannadine sees the period around 1880 as a peak after which the position of the old powerful families declined rapidly, from a number of causes, reaching a nadir in the years after the Second World War, symbolised by the widespread destruction of country houses. However, their wealth, if not their political power, has rebounded strongly since the 1980s, benefiting from greatly increased values of the land and fine art which many owned in quantity.
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Social class in the United Kingdom
The social structure of the United Kingdom has historically been highly influenced by the concept of social class, which continues to affect British society today. British society, like its European neighbours and most societies in world history, was traditionally (before the Industrial Revolution) divided hierarchically within a system that involved the hereditary transmission of occupation, social status and political influence. Since the advent of industrialisation, this system has been in a constant state of revision, and new factors other than birth (for example, education) are now a greater part of creating identity in Britain.
Although the country's definitions of social class vary and are highly controversial, most are influenced by factors of wealth, occupation, and education. Until the Life Peerages Act 1958, the Parliament of the United Kingdom was organised on a class basis, with the House of Lords representing the hereditary upper class and the House of Commons representing everybody else. The British monarch is usually viewed as being at the top of the social class structure.
British society has experienced significant change since the Second World War, including an expansion of higher education and home ownership, a shift towards a service-dominated economy, mass immigration, a changing role for women and a more individualistic culture. These changes have had a considerable impact on the social landscape. However, claims that the UK has become a classless society have frequently been met with scepticism. Research has shown that social status in the United Kingdom is influenced by, although separate from, social class.
This change in terminology corresponded to a general decrease in significance ascribed to hereditary characteristics, and increase in the significance of wealth and income as indicators of position in the social hierarchy.
The "class system" in the United Kingdom is widely studied in academia but no definition of the word class is universally agreed to. Some scholars may adopt the Marxist view of class where persons are classified by their relationship to means of production, as owners or as workers, which is the most important factor in that person's social rank. Alternatively, Max Weber developed a three-component theory of stratification under which "a person’s power can be shown in the social order through their status, in the economic order through their class, and in the political order through their party. The biggest current study of social class in the United Kingdom is the Great British Class Survey. Besides these academic models, there are myriad popular explanations of class in Britain. In her work Class, Jilly Cooper quotes a shopkeeper on the subject of bacon: "When a woman asks for back I call her 'madam'; when she asks for streaky I call her 'dear'."
In 1485, virtually all the English men and women were Roman Catholics. All were taught to believe that God created the universe and ordered it and was active in its daily workings. In other words, the world was a physical manifestation of God's will. There was no room for coincidence or accident. Educated English men and women had many ways of describing how the world was supposed to be, most of them metaphorical. One of their favorite metaphors was that of the body politic or viewing their nation as the human body. The king was the head; the aristocracy the arms and shoulders; the tenant farmers and poor the legs and feet, etc. The beauty of this metaphor was that it conveyed that all parts of the body politic contributed equally to the common good but were not equal in status: if the arms or legs attempted to usurp the head, chaos would ensue. This train of thought would later become known as the Great Chain of Being in which all inhabitants of the universe, in hierarchal order, went: God, then Angels, then Man, then Animals, then Plants, then Stones, then the Damned. Each of the ranks were further subdivided into smaller hierarchies. For the category Man, the order, from highest to lowest was; King, nobles, gentlemen, yeomen, husbandmen, cottagers, and laborers.
The United Kingdom never experienced the sudden dispossession of the estates of the nobility, which occurred in much of Europe after the French Revolution or in the early 20th century, the British nobility, in so far as it existed as a distinct social class, integrated itself with those with new wealth derived from commercial and industrial sources more comfortably than in most of Europe. Opportunities resulting from consistent economic growth and the expanding British Empire also enabled some from much poorer backgrounds (generally men who had managed to acquire some education) to rise through the class system.
The historian David Cannadine sees the period around 1880 as a peak after which the position of the old powerful families declined rapidly, from a number of causes, reaching a nadir in the years after the Second World War, symbolised by the widespread destruction of country houses. However, their wealth, if not their political power, has rebounded strongly since the 1980s, benefiting from greatly increased values of the land and fine art which many owned in quantity.