Brilliant, thanks for this, Simon. Am obsessed with in-between / outside class groups and love to see attempts to pin them down, champion them etc.
ALSO: Fall fans should be familiar with the word polyocracy, from Joker Hysterical Face:
"They say nothing ever changes Which is certainly true of the Polyocracy"
A note on The Annotated Fall site mentions the Waterhouse article and sez publication date was 23 October 1975: http://annotatedfall.doomby.com/pages/the-annotated-lyrics/joker-hysterical-face.html
I do love this genre of social observation / commentary that is thought through but not necessarily based in research or any kind of scholarly proof. I would love to get hold of old issues of New Society for instance (well, the contents of that were probably pretty rigorous, given the number of academics who wrote for it, but it's not written up as articles in a scholarly publication - more in the style of a newspaper column). I particularly like observations and predictions that have been overtaken by time. But this one by Waterhouse seems pretty on the money - seems to point to what you might call the GLC / City Limits class, which then actually had a belated if unsuccessful shot at power with Corbyn. Perhaps what hobbled it was the very split that caused Time Out and City Limits to break into two, with Time Out going the path of yuppie / gentrification / the reaffirmation of the old class lines. Although that said, even that Time Out constituency votes Labour I'm sure - London now is a Labour city-state. Labour in the metropolitan form is a tribal identification based on progressive values and even aesdthetics, as opposed to an identity based around the workplace, being in a union etc.
I haven't properly mined that Waterhouse book - that's the one column that leaped out at me. I also might have a dig through an Alan Coren collection. Often the satirists capture the times as well as any serious pundit. He did a very funny piece called The Culture Vultures which captures the trendy consumption patterns of ... well probably upper-Polyocracy would be the class. MIddle class but trendy and rabidly pursuing the new and the latest.
Brilliant, thanks for this, Simon. Am obsessed with in-between / outside class groups and love to see attempts to pin them down, champion them etc.
ReplyDeleteALSO: Fall fans should be familiar with the word polyocracy, from Joker Hysterical Face:
"They say nothing ever changes
Which is certainly true of the Polyocracy"
A note on The Annotated Fall site mentions the Waterhouse article and sez publication date was 23 October 1975: http://annotatedfall.doomby.com/pages/the-annotated-lyrics/joker-hysterical-face.html
Wow that is an amazing connection and nice bit of archive digging Mr Bollops.
ReplyDeleteI do love this genre of social observation / commentary that is thought through but not necessarily based in research or any kind of scholarly proof. I would love to get hold of old issues of New Society for instance (well, the contents of that were probably pretty rigorous, given the number of academics who wrote for it, but it's not written up as articles in a scholarly publication - more in the style of a newspaper column). I particularly like observations and predictions that have been overtaken by time. But this one by Waterhouse seems pretty on the money - seems to point to what you might call the GLC / City Limits class, which then actually had a belated if unsuccessful shot at power with Corbyn. Perhaps what hobbled it was the very split that caused Time Out and City Limits to break into two, with Time Out going the path of yuppie / gentrification / the reaffirmation of the old class lines. Although that said, even that Time Out constituency votes Labour I'm sure - London now is a Labour city-state. Labour in the metropolitan form is a tribal identification based on progressive values and even aesdthetics, as opposed to an identity based around the workplace, being in a union etc.
ReplyDeleteThey have bound volumes of New Society in the library at work but unfortunately they're reference only. Regular articles by Reyner Banham!
DeleteI haven't properly mined that Waterhouse book - that's the one column that leaped out at me. I also might have a dig through an Alan Coren collection. Often the satirists capture the times as well as any serious pundit. He did a very funny piece called The Culture Vultures which captures the trendy consumption patterns of ... well probably upper-Polyocracy would be the class. MIddle class but trendy and rabidly pursuing the new and the latest.
ReplyDelete