Abstract
Stewart is correct to use the plural in his title, as he argues effectively that there is no such phenomenon as a homogeneous middle class but, rather, a series of class fractions which are relatively fluid and mutable in their formations. However, the empirical focus of the book does limit itself to just one of those fractions which he labels the ‘silver disposition’, and does tend to treat it as though it were more cohesive than it probably is.
Stewart traces the historical formation of the middle classes and usefully summarises key characteristics of this formation as being based upon a combination of access and exploitation; access to economic and cultural resources and exploitation of organisation, property and cultural assets that enable privilege. He acknowledges that exploitation also means that the securing of status and an advantageous social space is at the expense of others. Although the economic is a crucial feature of middle class existence, Stewart’s book is far more concerned with a critical engagement with the level of the cultural and this, enhanced by extensive use of Bourdieu’s concept of different capitals, is the real strength of the book.
Rightly critical of the populist trend in cultural studies, Stewart devotes a lot of attention to what Bourdieu calls ‘legitimate culture’: that is, culture which has been legitimated over time and become part of the habitus of the dominant classes. One aspect of this legitimated cultural practice is theatre-going, and Stewart bases his empirical enquiry on audience research carried out over two nights at a theatre in Horsham, in the English county of West Sussex. In the process of offering a cultural analysis of this audience (or a section of it), he develops his own concept of the ‘silver disposition’, which I shall discuss later. He uses this concept to distance himself and the audience he researched from simply being described as ‘middle-brow’, but is not entirely convincing in doing so. The final chapter of the book turns its attention to what Stewart refers to as the defensive formations of dominant class groupings in rural England, and the ways in which protests mounted by these groupings were mediated in certain privileged quarters – parliament and the Tory press – as ‘gentlemanly’. Stewart accurately describes this mediation as a form of ‘class unconsciousness’– the reflex responses of caste privilege and entitlement.
Stewart shows how, although class consciousness as such may be in decline, class divisions – however articulated or defined – are still very much salient, and he effectively demolishes the myth of meritocracy. Stewart’s categorisation of sectors of society, regions of social space and the cultures of dominant groups valuably extends and complements his broader discussion of class. This enables him to produce a subtle and nuanced analysis of class formations in the early chapters, particularly at the level of dominance, entitlement and naturalized agency. It also provides him with the means of restoring the contested nature of class: a site of struggle, however it is carried out. As he argues, the internalizing of symbolic power and the habits of deference that flow from this are an important constituent of relatively stable class relations.
Although the chapter on culture is little more than a restatement of some of the central propositions of cultural studies and Bourdieu’s concept of legitimate culture, it does raise the critical question of the relationship of culture to power (an often forgotten dimension of earlier work in cultural studies), and also that of cultural value, itself unfashionable in certain areas of the field. Although Stewart raises these two issues, the book does not really engage critically with either, shifting instead to matters of taste when he goes on to examine ‘Theatre-goers and the Silver Disposition’ in Chapter 4.
The ‘silver disposition’ is defined by age (predominantly late middle-aged), a tendency to favour prestigious cultural practices and a predilection for cultural forms which have been sanctioned over time. I am not sure that it comes as a surprise that this ‘disposition’ has a preference for that which is established, or whether the concept ‘silver disposition’ really helps to refine our sense of this particular class fraction. The research took the form of a questionnaire with 24 mainly qualitative questions. Over two consecutive nights, Stewart collected 100 responses, but we are not told what percentage of the audience this constituted. Those who responded to the questionnaire had arrived early for a drink or a meal, and thus filled in their responses at leisure, and many of them in a group. The fact that many apparently saw it as a social exercise and answered in a group may have had some effect on the nature of their responses, but this is not significantly factored into Stewart’s analysis. The questions were designed to be simple and straightforward, with nothing that could be construed as intimidating, such as political allegiance or income. Nevertheless, Stewart claims that the feedback he received was illuminating and well considered, but we can only take his word for this as there are no appendices with his findings.
Some of the questions relating to ‘aesthetic judgement’ are not as factual as he presumes. For example, ‘list some of your favourite dramatists’, and ‘list some of your favourite plays’ may have elicited responses influenced by the social nature of the exercise, and ‘favourite’ may have been simply dramatists and plays that he respondents had heard of and/or were known to be sanctioned by the group consensus. Therefore, the answers may not have been as illuminating as claimed, neither do they necessarily ‘reveal a lot about the respondents en masse’. Although the respondents may have felt comfortable with the research process, it has to be remembered that as ‘conspicuous consumers’ (Stewart’s description) they were on display, and consciously or not may have given answers that reflected either group expectations, or ones which reflected their own self-evaluation, especially in respect of television viewing. Even though research of this kind is anonymous, it does not mean that people do not give answers that reflect well upon themselves or which they sense might be expected, as this is one way in which habitus operates. Stewart, of course, is aware of the limitations of questionnaires, but does not pay enough attention to the possible ideological bases of the responses, or to a certain knowingness (or even self-deception) in the context of such exercises. Hence, there is an element of special pleading and defensiveness, even, in his claims for what he calls the impressive, efficient and thorough nature of the research process. At the same time, he does acknowledge the complex nature of examining the responses and the problems involved in deriving objective conclusions from the data. Nevertheless, he is not always as cautious as he might have been in arriving at some of the generalizations and conclusions that he does.
Stewart spends a lot of time dealing with definitions of the middle-brow mainly because he wishes to demonstrate how his respondents do not fit neatly into this category. However, the fact that 23 percent mention Stoppard as one of their favourite dramatists and 15 percent name Pinter does not necessarily mean, as claimed, that this indicates a cultural preference for innovation in the contemporary theatre; rather, that these are by now household names of British theatre and, in the context of filling in a questionnaire while having a drink or meal, and chatting with friends, the kind of name that might well be listed. To argue, as Stewart does, on the basis of these responses, that such theatre-goers display an interest in (rather than awareness of) ‘radical, political and challenging theatrical forms that are in no way middle-brow’ is not justifiable in the absence of any other supporting evidence. If we had been told which plays were named, it would have helped assess the claim. In fact, it is hard to see any substantial evidence from the research that the taste revealed by the respondents is anything other than middle-brow – something that is confirmed by the responses to questions about reading habits and the strong preference expressed for musicals. Stewart does comment on the disparity between what the theatre-goers claim to like best and what they actually see, but he does not choose to explore this apparent contradiction.
While I consider that Stewart strains in his attempt to show that his sample of respondents is not middle-brow, he does locate this group quite precisely in terms of what he calls ‘class-performativity’, with theatre-going one of a set of lifestyle choices that are part of the representation of the bourgeois self in everyday life of a certain generation. In the penultimate chapter, Stewart makes good use of Alison Light’s work on the anxieties and insecurities of the middle classes, but to conclude from her arguments and on the basis of his research that the play being performed on the occasion of his survey – Trap for a Lonely Man – is seen by the audience as a mirror of their own mixture of certainty and uncertainty, that it offers a sense of belonging, or ‘provides an outlet for the anxieties associated with the silver disposition’ is an unwarranted speculation. Apart from its ignorance of the complexities of reception theory, such an attempt to extrapolate from a literary text a whole set of affective dispositions is without foundation, especially as he later says that it is the type of theatre that appeals to the ‘silver disposition’ on the basis of conspicuous consumption. It may be true also that it reflects a whole host of insecurities, but a very different kind of research would be needed to establish this.
The final chapter marks an abrupt shift from the preoccupations of the preceding two chapters. It broadens the concept of culture from its restrictive usage in previous chapters to a more general sense by examining protest by various middle class interest groups as a cultural practice. Stewart looks at the Countryside Alliance and the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England, and their defence of privilege, property and access to land – or what they would call ‘a vital, working and thriving countryside that benefits everyone’. Whether the ‘Westminster invasion’ of September 2004 (part of a protest at the hunting ban) and the way it was converted into a narrative of gentlemanly behaviour can be aligned with the ‘silver disposition’, or that hunting is a sport which ‘meets the conspicuous requirements of the silver disposition’ is arguable, as it seems to me that those involved occupy a quite distinctive and different position in class and social space, and in terms of their relation or access to power. There is a need for subtler differentiations between the dominant societal groupings here and throughout the rest of the book. Nevertheless, the chapter is strong on the forms and rituals of this particular, rural fraction of the dominant classes, and on its mixture of exclusionary behaviour and populist rhetoric.
Culture and the Middle Classes draws upon a range of literature in its first three chapters to bring a number of fresh insights to bear upon issues of class, and to make a case for the need to extend cultural analysis to the lifestyles of those neglected by much work in cultural studies. The chapters which form the basis of the empirical study offer frequently illuminating observations on the cultural practices of sections of the middle class, but in too often taking its respondents’ responses at face value, it tends to undermine its arguments by making claims and speculations which cannot be sustained by the evidence presented. The book is accessibly written and its critical analysis of class formations and the concept of culture makes it of real value, even if its empirical study is less convincing.