Multiplying the Old Divisions of Class in Britain

英国社会的七个阶级

 

Class in Britain used to be a relatively simple matter, or at least it used to be treated that way. It came in three flavors – upper, middle and working – and people supposedly knew by some mysterious native sixth sense exactly where they stood. As the very tall John Cleese declared to the less-tall Ronnie Corbett in the famous 1966 satirical television sketch meant to illustrate class attitudes in Britain – or, possibly, attitudes toward class attitudes – “I look down on him, because I am upper class.”

 

英国的阶级问题过去曾经是一个相对简单的事情，或者至少曾经被当作简单的事情对待。那时英国分为三个阶级，上层阶级、中产阶级以及工人阶级，人们仿佛具备某种神秘的、与生俱来的第六感，清楚地知道自己属于哪个阶级。就像个子很高的约翰·克里斯（John Cleese）在1966年一部非常著名的电视讽刺短剧中，向个子较矮的罗尼·科比特（Ronnie Corbett）公开表示的那样：“我看不起他，因为我是上层阶级。”这部短剧旨在展示英国的阶级态度，或者说是人们对阶级态度的态度。

 

It is not as easy as all that, obviously. The 2010 election was enlivened at one point by a perfectly serious discussion of whether David Cameron, now the prime minister, counted as upper upper-middle class, or lower upper-middle class. But on Wednesday, along came the BBC, muddying the waters with a whole new set of definitions.

 

很明显，事情并没有那么简单。2010年的选举因为一场非常严肃的辩论而一度富有生气，辩论的主题是，应该将戴维·卡梅伦（David Cameron），也就是现任首相，算作地位较高的中上阶层呢，还是地位较低的中上阶层。但在周四，BBC也投身其中，给出了一套全新的定义，让事情变得更复杂。

 

Having commissioned what it called The Great British Class Survey, an online questionnaire filled out by more than 161,000 people, the BBC concluded that in today’s complicated world, there are now seven different social classes. (“As if three weren’t annoying enough,” a woman named Laura Phelps said on Twitter.) These range from the “elite” at the top, distinguished by money, connections and rarefied cultural interests, to the “precariat” at the bottom, characterized by lack of money, lack of connections and unrarefied cultural interests.

 

在委托开展了所谓的“英国阶级大型调查”（The Great British Class Survey），并有超过16.1万人填写了一份在线问卷后，BBC得出了如下结论：在复杂的当今世界，现在有七种不同的社会阶级。（“好像有三种还不够烦人似的。”Twitter上一位名叫劳拉·菲尔普斯（Laura Phelps）的女子说。）这些阶级中，处于顶端的是“精英”（elite），他们的财富、社会关系和高端的文化兴趣都引人注目。而位于底端的“无业游民”（precariat），特征则是没有钱、没有社会关系，也没有高端的文化趣味。

 

That might sound kind of familiar, but Fiona Devine, a sociologist who helped devise the study, said, “It’s what’s in the middle which is really interesting and exciting.”

 

这两个阶层听起来可能并不陌生，但帮助设计研究的社会学家菲奥娜·迪瓦恩（Fiona Devine）说：“真正有趣和激动人心的是社会的中层。”

 

The middle categories, as the study defines them, include the “technical middle class,” a group that has a lot of money but few superior social connections or cultural activity; the “emergent service workers,” a young, urban group that has little money but a high amount of social and cultural capital; and the “new affluent workers,” who score high on social and cultural activity, but have only a middling amount of money.

 

按照这次研究的定义，社会中层的分类包括“严格意义上的中产阶级”（technical middle class），这个群体有很多钱，但几乎没有优越的社会关系或文化活动；“新兴服务业工作者”（emergent service workers），他们年轻、居住在城市中，没什么钱但有大量的社会资本和文化资本；“新富工作者”（new affluent workers），他们的社交和文化活动层次较高，但财富积累仅处在中间程度。

 

“There’s a much more fuzzy area between the traditional working class and the traditional middle class,” Ms. Devine, a professor of sociology at Manchester University, said in remarks accompanying the research. “The survey has really allowed us to drill down and get a much more complete picture of class in modern Britain.”

 

迪瓦恩是曼彻斯特大学（Manchester University）社会学教授。“传统的工人阶级和传统的中产阶级之间，有了一个更加模糊的区域，”她在研究结果发布时表示。“实际上这项研究让我们能够深入问题，对现代英国阶级的整体情况有一个远更全面的了解。”

 

Not everyone sees it that way. In a country that is not sure whether it is (a.) obsessed with class, or (b.) merely obsessed with whether it is as obsessed about class as it used to be (if it ever really was), the survey got widespread attention. But some Britons thought the researchers had not considered the correct criteria.

 

并不是所有人都这样觉得。在英国这个不知道该说是沉迷于阶级问题，还是只是纠结于“今天是否像过去一样沉迷于阶级问题”的国家（如果说英国的确曾经沉迷于阶级问题的话），BBC的调查引起了广泛的关注。不过一些英国人认为，研究人员没有考虑正确的标准。

 

“There are only two classes: those with tattoos, and those without,” said one Daily Mail reader, commenting on the paper’s article about the new categories.

 

《每日邮报》（Daily Mail）的一位读者，对该报关于新分类的报道发表评论说：“只有两个阶级：有纹身的和没有纹身的。”

 

Another wrote: “What are they called in ‘Brave New World’? Alphas, Betas, Gammas and Epsilons? That’s well on the way to becoming a factual book. We already have most of the population on ‘Soma,’” a reference to the antidepressant in the book.

 

另一位读者写道：“在《美丽新世界》（Brave New World）里是怎么叫的？阿尔法、贝塔、伽马、伊普西龙？这书里讲的事情，恐怕正在慢慢地变成事实。我们当中已经有多数人在嗑‘唆麻’（Soma）了。”唆麻是书中描写的一种抗抑郁药物。

 

The study was published in the journal Sociology and conducted by Ms. Devine in conjunction with Mike Savage, a professor of sociology at the London School of Economics, and the BBC Lab UK.

 

这项研究是迪瓦恩与伦敦政治经济学院（London School of Economics）社会学教授迈克·萨维奇（Mike Savage），以及BBC Lab UK共同开展的。研究结果发表在了学术期刊《社会学》（Sociology）上。

 

Throwing out the old formula by which class was defined according to occupation, wealth and education, it created in its place a definition calculated according to “economic capital,” which includes income and savings; “social capital,” which refers to whom one knows from among 37 different occupations; and “cultural capital,” which is defined as the sorts of cultural interests one pursues, from a list of 27.

 

这项研究摒弃了根据职业、财富和教育程度决定阶级的旧公式，而是建立了一种新的定义方式。新方式根据三个因素进行计算，分别是“经济资本”，包括收入和储蓄；“社会资本”，指某人在37种不同的职业中都认识谁；“文化资本”，其定义是在27项兴趣组成的列表中，某人所具有的文化趣味。

 

In the 1950s, the author Nancy Mitford argued that it was possible to tell which class people were in – upper class (“U”) or not upper class (“non-U”) – according to their choice of vocabulary. U-speakers said “rich” and “jam,” she observed, while non-U speakers said “wealthy” and “preserves,” among other things.

 

在20世纪50年代，作家南茜·米特福德（Nancy Mitford）提出，通过用词倾向就可以判断人们处于哪个阶级——“上层阶级”还是“非上层阶级”。她观察到，上层阶级形容有钱时会说“rich”，管果酱叫做“jam”，而非上层阶级则会分别使用“wealthy”和“preserves”，等等。

 

(“Almost everyone I know has some personal antipathy which they condemn as middle class quite irrationally,” Evelyn Waugh wrote in response. “My mother-in-law believes it is middle class to decant claret.”)

 

（作为回应，伊夫林·沃（Evelyn Waugh）写道：“我认识的几乎所有人，都把某种他本人的厌恶对象，相当不理性地谴责为中产阶级事物。我的岳母认为，只有中产阶级才会把红酒从原瓶中倒至特别的酒瓶里。”）

 

Mitford was being mischievous, except that she kind of wasn’t, since she was describing the way people actually spoke. In conjunction with today’s study, the BBC offered a modern adaptation of the Mitford test, a handy do-it-yourself online class calculator.

 

米特福德是在戏谑搞笑，但在某种程度上却又道出了实情，因为她所描写的正是人们讲话的真实方式。与今天的研究相配合，BBC也对米特福德的判断方式，进行了一种现代的改编，他们提供了一个方便的在线阶级自测计算器。

 

In their report, the researchers acknowledged that their Web survey showed a large amount of bias, in that the type of people who filled it out were the type of people inclined to fill out BBC surveys (well educated, and 90 percent white, for instance). So they conducted a separate face-to-face survey of 1,026 nationally representative people and then combined the two sets of results, arriving at the seven categories.

 

在报告中，研究人员承认，他们的在线调查呈现了大量的偏差，填写在线调查的那种受访者，正是倾向于填写BBC调查的那种人。例如，他们受过良好的教育，90%为白人。所以他们又对1026位在全国具有代表性的受访者，单独开展了一项面对面的调查，之后将两组结果相结合，得出了这七种分类。

 

Cary L. Cooper, a professor at Lancaster University and the chairman of the Academy of Social Sciences, said that what he found intriguing was not what the study said about different social categories, but rather what it said about people’s desire to place themselves in one or another such category.

 

兰开斯特大学（Lancaster University）教授、英国社会科学院（Academy of Social Sciences）院长卡里·L·库珀（Cary L. Cooper）说，他认为有趣的并不是研究中关于社会阶层分类的内容，而是其中所讲述的，人们将自己置于这个或那个分类的愿望。

 

“People love filling in questionnaires,” Mr. Cooper said in an interview. “From a psychologists’ point of view, it’s very interesting that they love to pigeonhole themselves – ‘I am that kind of person,’ ‘No matter what people like to say, I am an X.’”

 

“人们很喜欢填写问卷，”库珀在一次采访中说。“站在心理学家的视角看，人们喜欢自己给自己归类是件很有趣的事，‘我是这种人’，‘不管别人想说什么，我都是一个某某。’”

 

Britain remains a “status-conscious society,” he said, especially at times of social and economic insecurity. He attributed the public’s love of “Downton Abbey” and other class-related nostalgic entertainment to a yearning for a time when things were simpler, when “even though there was a rigid class system, at least it was stable.”

 

他说，英国仍然是一个“社会地位意识很强的国家”，尤其是在社会和经济上的不安全感都很强的时候。他将公众对《唐顿庄园》（Downton Abbey），以及其他与阶级相关的怀旧娱乐项目的热捧，归结为人们渴望着一个情况比现在简单的时代，“尽管当时有牢固的阶级体制，但至少它是稳定的”。

 

Back on the Daily Mail Web site, readers continued to debate the conclusions, and the limitations, of the BBC research.

 

在《每日邮报》的网站上，读者还在对BBC调查的结论和局限性展开争论。

 

“I couldn’t find ‘awesome’ class,” one commenter complained.

 

一位评论者抱怨说：“找不到‘强悍’阶级啊。”

 

Another wrote: “What rubbish. Only three classes, working, middle and wealthy. You either have money, no money or some money.”

 

另一位写道：“胡说八道。只有三个阶级，干活的、中产的和有钱的。要么有钱，要么没钱，要么有一些钱。”

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