The End of Society as We Know It (or, as they knew it)

April 5, 2014
Posted by Jay Livingston

In the unit on social class, I sometimes show an excerpt from the 2001 PBS show “People Like Us: Social Class in America.”  Here’s a brief clip.



One semester, it dawned on me that for some of the words and images in this 35-second excerpt, my students haven’t a clue. 


“Those people on horses – does anyone know what that is?” Usually not. When I tell them, they are often incredulous that there could actually be such a thing as a fox hunt.  And it takes place only a twenty-minute drive from the Morristown Mall.


The man in the clip is identified as a “society columnist.” Few of my students have any idea what society here means.

The society columnist says that sometimes your social class is based on “if your mother came out at the Infirmary Ball in New York City.”  Coming out? Being presented to society at a debutante ball?  It might as well be a Kwakiutl potlatch.

The distance is not just one of class but of generation. These upper-class rituals seem to be going out of style. Even kids born in the 90s – even wealthy kids – may find them an anachronism.  Do newspapers still have “society columnists”? When I Googled that phrase, most of the hits seemed to be obituaries. This headline from 2006 is typical.
Washington Star Society Columnist Betty Beale, 94
Miss Beale and the Washington Star are no longer with us. Her profession seems to be headed for a similar fate.  As for being presented at a ball, we know precisely when that took a dive thanks to Google’s Wedding Crunchers. It’s basically their n-grams function, but the database is wedding announcements in the New York Times.*

(Click on the graph for a larger view.)


Being presented at a ball started its rapid decline in 1998. Five years later, it had disappeared. Even if you had been presented at a ball, it was not something you wanted to include in your Times announcement.

What new distinctions have arisen in place of balls? I don’t know, but Wedding Crunchers might be a great resource for clues.

-----------------------------
*HT: Andrew Gelman. There’s much more to be gleaned from Wedding Crunchers. The default page shows changes in bride ages (26 - 33). In 1993, the most frequent age was 26. Last year, 26 ranked seventh out of eight. Things change, even for the elite.
at

2 comments:

  1. Andrew GelmanApril 05, 2014 4:41 PM

    One of our papers analyzes a survey from 1990 in which there was a question about Jaycees. Most of the people I've talked with, of all ages and nationalities, have never heard of a Jaycee. Which I guess is just fine; it's nothing but a bit of trivia, and as long as you're not interested in reading mid-20th-century American novels, you probably don't need the concept. Or, of course, if you live in a town where Jaycees are prominent, but I don't know too many people who live in such towns.

    ReplyDelete
  2. PCMApril 15, 2014 2:58 PM

    Thinks are changing for everybody. Middle-class markers are less known, too. Ask your students if they know what a Beefsteak Dinner is. Or even a fraternal organization.

    But for the upper-class there must be new markers. What are they?

    ReplyDelete