The nineteenth century usage in the UK was to define the middle class as those whose large incomes and wealth did not come from land but from business and / or industry so in Austin the Bennet's aunt and uncle whose wealth and income came from commerce were middle class. Lydia was a gentleman's daughter and hence upper class. In mid twentieth century usage it has become a distributional term referring to households in the middle of an income range but also has cultural characteristics in terms of a Bourdieu derived notion of different tastes - books in the house but more than that and education has become part of the definition although in the present with a very large part of age cohorts getting a tertiary education that means that more differentiation is required. Of course the cultural stuff was in popular consciousness before social scientists ever used Bourdieu to give it a theory base.

Of course the generator of class is property relations and the mode of production. It is interesting that the the US Republicans are putting middle class so far up the income scale - back to the social relations of the Edwardian period indeed but then that is just about where income inequality is these days in the English speaking world.

David Byrne

Social class has has no objective reality. I may be wrong, but I think that at one time in UK the middle class were the squirarchy, those one step below the aristocracy. The sort of people Jane Austen wrote about. They had servants. So that might simply be their idea of middle class, just below the $million income. More historically correct.

Martin

On 16 November 2017 at 21:13, Harry Feldman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Americans think unionised workers are middle class, too. So go figure.

On 2017-11-17 01:44, Moore, Robert wrote:
Laugh, cry, get angry? The latter I suppose .....

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48189.htm


Robert

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