Standard marketing definitions of social grading

A Upper middle class . Higher managerial, administrative or professional.

B Middle class Intermediate managerial administrative or professional.

C1 Lower middle class. Supervisory or clerical and junior managerial, administrative or professional

C2 Skilled working class. Skilled manual workers.

D Working class Semi and unskilled manual workers.

E Those at lowest levels of subsistence. State pensioners or widows (no other earner), casual or lowest grade workers.

(Barry Hugill “The Individual in Society” 2000)

T E X T 2

Consumer society and identity

Post modernist theory promotes the idea that we now live in a media-saturated environment in which we are constantly encouraged by the media to spend money (consume). The theory suggests that we now live in a new era, in which the importance of production or work activities in shaping identities (by helping to from class instance) has declined. Some postmodernist theorists argue that class, as meaningful sociological category, no longer exists. It is claimed that we now live in a period of affluence and that it is what we buy which now determines membership of social groups and our social identity. It is these bonds of consumption – in buying Nike trainers or Prada clothes, for example – which create our sense of identity.

The typical British household now enjoys a standard of living beyond the grasp of any previous generation. And we are not alone. Most Britons are members of a global consumer society which embraces most North Americans, West Europeans; Japanese and Australians, together with the inhabitants of the Middle East oil sheikdoms and the city-states of Hong Kong and Singapore. As we hover around the cusp of the 10^th and 21^st century, the consumer class is on the rise, too, in Eastern Europe, Latin America and South and East Asia. Germans bought one million used Western cars in 1991 alone, while in Chinese cities, two-thirds of households now own washing machines.

Half a century after the end of the Second World War, the American consumer society provides the model to which ordinary citizens in every corner of the global aspire. In America itself, the average couple owns twice as many cars, covers 25 times as much distance by air, and 21 times as much plastic as their parents did in 1950. Today, the consumer society can be summed up by “ shopping-mall mania” and “fast-food frenzy”. About 60 % of food Americans eat is bought ready-made in supermarkets, at takeaway outlets or in restaurants.

Japan, Western Europe and Australasia are not far behind. In the past 50 years the British, French and West Germans have tripled the amount of paper per person they counsume. In the eighties the amount of processed and package food eaten per individual doubled, while consumption of soft drinks per person shot up by 30 % between 1985 and 1990.

Now, perhaps more than ever before, we are wondering what life is all about, what it’s for. We are searching for meaning and balance. Many are turning to alternative ways of living and downshifting is one of them. Indeed, in Western societies downshifting is one of the fastest-developing social trends of the late nineties, as more of us yearn for simpler, more fulfilling lives and the time to enjoy the good things in life. In the United States, the word downshifting is already common parlance.

What meaning does downshifting hold in nineties Britain? Are we turning to it for the same reasons as in America? Ian Christie, an associate director at the Henley Center for Forecasting, defines it as follows: “ It’s taking a deliberate decision to opt out of the culture of consumerism and the career rat race. It’s about cutting back on purchasing, reducing working hours, and perhaps bailing out of conventional work in search of greater quality of life and control over one’s work”.

Professor Ray Pahl, one of Britain’s foremost sociologists, has been studying our work practices, our attitudes to work and its role in our lives for the past three decades. He sums up the key elements of downshifting in these terms: “Conventionally, it is a conscious attempt to live at a quieter pace in order to spend more time away from employment. On the one hand, it is a response to greedy and thoughtless institutions, and one the other a pull to a more attractive activity than simply maintaining one’s identity at the world of work”.

T E X T 3