An Introduction To A Social-Network Approach to Social-Class. (Another Part of 'An Ethnographer in Paradise.')

When I was a kid, other neighbourhood kids would frequently make it over to our house. Sunday evenings were the best. We had a large garden, great for football, and my Dad was a willing host cum referee cum footballing-clown. In my memory I can, to this day, paint every nuance, every shade and sub-shade, of our Whalley Range evenings under darkening skies in early October when the kids came round to play. I can see the Manchester sky of purple-grey, the rained green of the grass and, of course, the obligatory blackbirds that sketch across every inner city memory.

Those times were good and bad.

I can still remember the names of the boys (mainly) and girls who hung around our big old house though, for the sake of propriety, they are changed here. There was fat, ambling Jimmy, two bags of shopping in his arms, always making his way back to his ne'er seen mum behind the closed curtains of their flat. There was Spike, the half-caste kid who was brilliant at football (though, stupidly, the teachers at our school told him not to show-off his skills), but talked of how his Dad used  "the belt."  There was little Kendra on her scooter. There was Wilkins whose head was cut open in a car accident we witnessed on Withington Road. There were the funny, funny Holly Brothers who shrieked with laughter and whose mum would never eat her own cooking. We'd see her eat alone, late-hours,  in the Whalley Range cafe.  There was Emily, well-spoken and with proud,protective parents. And then there were the children of the West family, whom we never invited in. They were violent, disturbed, gangster kids whose parents ran the brothel opposite our house. Sometimes the West kids would try to steal into our garden but my Mum and Dad always rebuffed them. Once, after they had mugged an old Spanish lady and left her bleeding in the road, I watched as my Mum and Dad tended to their victim, enduring the catcalls of the West kids as they did so. This is one of those memories that gets inked in without a trace of the romantic skies and flapping blackbirds.

I was probably about ten years old when this mugging happened. So were some of the West children. Some were younger. Indeed, I also recollect the youngest of that family breaking the headlights of a neighbour's car with a hammer. He was wearing a nappy as he did so. This was a long time before feral children became news-worthy. 

With adult eyes, huge complexities are revealed in the lives of all these children. If I continue with the West family for a little while, one stark point that stands out to me now is that the nappy-wearing, hammer-wielding toddler was probably acting upon instruction. Indeed, I recall as I write that the car subject to the attack was new, and owned by an elegant, West-Indian family who lived next door. It seems to add up now. But children are children, and families are families, and their psycho-social layers are hugely complex. One alternate light upon the West family is cast by their attendance at the English Martyrs Catholic Church. I never saw their monstrous Dad in there, but Mum and the kids sometimes made it. And I have one particularly distinct memory of the family's ashen-faced, younger daughter, knelt in the pew praying with great fervour. I can't remember me or my siblings ever praying like that. I can't remember any of our friends praying like that. We would nudge each other and fool around or else just stare glassy eyed and bored in the vague direction of the Priest. She didn't. She prayed. Shereally prayed. Now, again with my adult eyes, I wonder what motivated her. She'd have been about twelve or thirteen. I wonder. What was going on in her life?

Recently, I learned from a professional source that the West kids became real gangsters. Real, adult gangsters. I don't know what happened to the Holly boys, or to Kendra or Emily, or to Spike. I do know that Jimmy was doomed even before his childhood was out. After all, why did his mother choose to live in darkness?  Scanning forward, my family would move to the other side of the park in Whalley Range and then, eventually, to Formby. Many more kids came into our lives and many left. Some went on to great things, some to good things, and some to disaster. I won't expand for now. There is nothing statistically unusual in what I describe. Indeed the point is the normality of what I present to you. I am not claiming any special set of experiences for an inner-city kind-of kid. My point rests upon what I describe to you as being normal.

My point is this; when I look back on who succeeded, who failed, who lived and who died, from amongst my lifetime sample of childhood friends, I cannot in my mind, from this perspective, draw a correlation with poverty. The poorest kids were not necessarily the ones who met the worst fate. Indeed, down at this level, sometimes, the very poorest seem to out-perform the richer. Of course we need to bear in mind that this is Whalley Range, one street away from Moss Side, so we are probably within or just astride the poorest statistical sample-set as used by, say, the National Statistical Office. This brings statistical complexities into it and there is also a quantitative versus qualitative argument. But, whatever, to me it is important to say that 'poverty' was probably more of a symptom than a cause. I have always struggled to believe the relative-poverty argument because it just does not seem marry with the evidence of my own life. Of course, I wholly believe in the tragedy of 'absolute-poverty' as experienced in, say, Ukraine or Rural Africa, but in the UK, after Peterloo, after the suffragettes, after social security and in the ages of education, mass-media, pop music, mobile phones and internet, it feels that outside of recent immigrants, 'relative-poverty' can only be a symptom.

This is difficult territory, but there is a comments section below for any agreement or disagreement that may be engendered. I have deliberately built from personal experience and will, of course, accept the vision of a greater light.

Moving forward, the relatively high performance of many immigrant groups adds to my thesis. These groups were very much part of our Whalley Range landscape. We were tied to the Polish comunity, of course, and then, through schools, friendships, and eventually marriage, to the Irish. I've mentioned half-caste Spike and the West-Indian family opposite. There were Italians next door on one side and Russians on the other. Our second Whalley Range home was on a street that would, eventually, come to be populated by marvellous, warm-hearted Pakistani Muslim families. They worked huge hours, shared their growing wealth across family groups, and did well. They had businesses and Audis within ten or twenty years of landing in real poverty in the UK. The success of these families cannot be explained by a 'relative-poverty' thesis.

It seems to me that rather than 'relative-poverty' it is better to look at two inter-related factors. The first is the raw talent of individuals in poorer sections of society. It seems to me that the more talented are, if they accept a common-definition of social success, more likely to attain it and to progress up the social-ladder. However, it again seems to me, raw talent does not act in isolation. The second crucial factor is the social-network within which the individual talent is implanted. Understanding what makes a successful social-network seems to me to be a promising way of understanding how society works in the UK today. It might cast an alternate light on why some problems bed in over generations and resist improvements in the actual wealth of people and groups. In developing this, I have my own scratch formula to present across indices of aspiration, economic-power, knowledge-power and emotional-insight. I'll present all of this in a later blog. I'll also have a go at defining what I mean by 'social network' though you can take it from my examples above that the emotional bonds of nuclear and extended families will be primary.

For now, I'll remind you that I write in the South of France. Here, amidst the wealth of the Riviera, I contend, the power of social-networks is much in evidence. We all recognise it. Few would disagree with me in the context of Cannes or Monte-Carlo, success breeds success. Few would disagree that the sons and daughters of the rich tend to do well because of network effects like economic clout and knowledge networks. As these networks promote talent, few would disagree that they also insulate their young people against mistakes or lack of talent. The point I am making here is that success in the lower echelons of society is also, in some substantial part, a network effect. You need the right people, the right connections and the right knowledge around you.

More soon. 

Next: Little Wilson and Big Technology.  

Another Stubborn Part of An Ethnographer in Paradise. 

To live in the West in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century is an extraordinary gift of fortune. Though we like to complain, we would not swap our health and wealth prospects for those of by-gone ages. A young man or woman today will, typically, have unprecedented experiences available and unfolding. They would not swap for a birth date of 150 years earlier, 100 years earlier, or even 50 years previous. It may be deeply unfashionable, but sometimes it is good to count one's blessings.

Of course, I write as the Basse Corniche awakens under the garden of my apartment. I can see that the Christina Ois resting in the sunny bay and, if I stand on my tip-toes, I can report that I am the immediate, rear neighbour of The Edge of U2. I can just about see the back-gate and yellow chimneys of his beach-house as the hill slopes the short distance to the Mediterranean. Next door to The Edge, of course, is Eze Les Roses, the wonderfully named house of his Dublin band-mate, Bono. To my eyes, both houses are quite beautiful, especially Eze Les Roses which looks as is if might be an early example of French Modernism. I could easily be wrong and so I will try to find out more.

It does seem to me that this life is as I put it, an extraordinary gift of fortune, but as I say this I am actually not thinking immediately of the Riviera. I am just a.n.other holidaymaker here, another face in the Marche U supermarket. Rather, I am thinking again of the city where I grew up, Manchester. Although overall it is a very mixed experience and can be brutal, for most and for most of the time, life in Manchester is good. And the city has a special claim in this great, globalised world, for it was, of course, the crucible, the test-bed, the pilot of the modern industrialised age. The industrial revolution roared out from the North of England, but Manchester was the epicentre of the quake. And today Manchester can claim an extraordinary heritage in technological and social innovation. Manchester's c.v. reads with the railway, steam, atomic theory, and the computer. It has the Trade Union movement, the suffragettes and associations with Marx and Engels.

When one considers such a c.v., one might ask why Manchester is not one of the richest cities in the world. Why isn't the crucible also a leader today?  For it isn't. Manchester is enjoying substantial renewal, it is difficult to get a hotel bed there on almost any weekend, but it isn't in the first division of world cities. It isn't a London, a Shanghai, a New York, a Paris or a Madrid. It isn't Rome. I am told it is not a Sydney or a Vancouver either. Mancunians, with their legendary selective vision, may protest this but culturally, for sheer scale, for sheer wealth, it is not amongst the elite. Not even now. Why not? Why did the fruits of its innovation, of its leadership, not come back to it in a more fulsome way. Where did its wealth go? And why?

Manchester is a very good contender but not an elite-player. Deansgate and St Anne's reward the visitor, and its rural hinterlands will surprise many, but it is not London. It can claim to be cool, savvy, innovative and niche, but might it, once upon a time, have had still greater aspirations? When it led the world into a new age, might it have considered itself to have a still greater future ahead of it?

Where did all the money go?

Of course, there are many ways in which money can leak from a city or regional economy. It can, for example, never properly arrive in the first place, but be managed from distance by international financiers and institutions. Some trickle-down will occur as wages are paid, but unless there is an opportunity for local taxation, money will wash back in the direction from whence it came. Moreover, a new middle class will itself be mobile. If a city cannot keep its newly-wealthy, then it loses finance, knowledge and emotional know-how. Money goes to where the people want to be (hence the dramatic success of the French Riviera since the 1960s. ) 

It is time to talk about devolution.  Two immediate problems afflict anyone who raises this issue in the UK. The first is that it is taken to be an anti-London stance. I love London; its architecture and world-role are beyond contest. Its vowel sounds must roll like a dream for so many of the world's dispossessed. It is League One, Serie A, Premiership. So, my toe-entry into the devolution debate is not anything to do with being anti-London. Like Dublin, like New York, Madrid, Barcelona and Paris, it is on my personal list of favourites. However, the second problem to afflict any would-be devolver is the 'B' word; bureaucracy. Aren't proponents of devolution simply likely to put more administrators, more committees and more politicians between the people and a decision. Isn't it is a recipe for bureaucracy? This argument carries some punch.

I think that we need to revisit our base concepts about public services before we think again about devolution. In the end, the two go hand in hand. We need a dramatic vision of an innovative public sector to accompany a claim for devolution. Perhaps the failure to rethink and encapsulate a vision of public service was actually a large part of the failure of John Prescott's regional devolution agenda. It felt like people were being asked to embrace more of the same. Perhaps what was needed was a more exciting model in the first place, and thence the claim for local control.

And it is the creation of this exciting vision that is the hard part. This is a theme that I will return to should chance allow. For now, I'd just say that technology is very often the key for new technology may change the way we organise (see, for example, Clayton Christensen writing on Social Innovation in a recent Harvard Business Review article). Now, in the age of the internet, in the age of Web 2.0,  might we be able to rethink how government works? Might we be able to manage the transaction costs of government so that we can efficiently localise control? Might we build a better case for devolution if we can also claim that it will be associated with a lighter-weight but more effective public-sector?

All of which brings me finally to the death of Anthony H Wilson. There is a fine appreciation hereon Dave Carter's ONE Manchester blogsite. I am not going to go into all the Factory history here, others know more and have written better. My contribution to the commemoration of Anthony H Wilson is to say that when I read Dave Carter's blog, and put this together with Anthony's recent campaigning for devolution, I began to think that here was a man who could maybe have helped put the triangle together:

New technology / New Model of Public Sector / New Devolution of Control  

A triangle with two sides is no good. You need three.

This is another reason to mourn Anthony H Wilson. Maybe, just maybe, for all his achievements, his greatest work was still ahead.

Finally, I finish these thoughts in Monaco, latterly home to John Anthony Burgess Wilson (1917-1993). This other Wilson was a great Mancunian and came to live in Monaco in the 1970s. Recently, a UK media troubled by stories of youth violence has been revisiting A Clockwork Orange, one of his greatest novels. For me, Burgess is one of the reasons to be in Monaco. Like his namesake Anthony H, John Anthony Burgess was more-interested in the legend of his life than in its contestable reality. But what a life it was. What a legend.

Read the two parts of his autobiography, 'Little Wilson and Big God' and 'You've Had Your Time.' 

As I have been writing so much about Manchester today, herein I launch my campaign for some official commemoration of Burgess in the city. He is one of the greatest.

 
The First Part of 'An Ethnographer in Paradise'

On the beach at Eze-Sur-Mer: Larry Ellison's yacht 'The Rising Sun' is moored out in the bay. Behind us are the houses of  Bono and The Edge of U2. Effectively, they share the same grounds. Bono's is the more forward, standing directly over the beach. The Edge's is slightly more withdrawn, a large, attractive, yellow-painted traditional house nestling in greenery. Both houses are very large, so large that even on an ample site they are rather squashed between the sea and the Nice-Monaco railway behind. This is not a tranquil idyll, but a small, lively, almost bohemian, perimeter to Monaco. But these are Dublin boys and after growing up with the traffic of that city, the noise of the Riviera is probably more homely than the quiet of some Caribbean island.

I am not sure I have had any close encounters with celebrity. This isn't one either, but its a sudden, almost shocking, profound insight into the scale and wealth of the 'A'-list. Ellison's yacht is well-chronicled; even the yacht-classes are stirred by it. Bono's house 'Eze Les Roses' receives less attention on the internet but a little later research tells me that it is one of three that he owns.

As I sit on the beach it is possible for me to get some impression of the scale of the operation involved in running a house for one of U2. The house itself maintains its privacy, by virtue of its high sea wall and the short beach, but I can see the domestic and security staff at their business. They are trimming roses, watching, cleaning, going between Eze Les Roses and The Edge's house. They are a multi-cultural crew: many in black t-shirts but one or two seem to be dressed for the office. Most notable is a rather hot looking man who stands in the front of The Edge's house using binoculars to survey the beach for unwelcome photographers. Does this mean that U2 are at home?

Soon a small two-seater helicopter comes over the hills and buzzes around houses and yacht. Could this be the paparazzi? Could it be really? I am not sure at first but then I notice that it gains disapproving looks from the staff of the U2 houses. It must be. I am amidst the genuine life experience of the 'A'-list.

My youngest daughter is bored and so we go for a walk along the beach. 

Later we pass by the shared gateway of the U2 houses as we make our way back to our apartment. We are carrying bags of shopping. My wife and eldest daughter are ahead, talking. I am with my slower-paced younger daughter. As my wife and eldest pass the gates, a car pulls up and waits. Immersed in conversation my wife notices nothing, but I see that it is Bono at the wheel. I notice the voice first. Loud. Dublin. Warm. I think you can tell singers by the way they speak. He is talking to two others in the car, a bald man in the front and a dark-haired woman in the back.

It is Bono. Bono of U2, of social-campaigns, of poverty-campaigns, of 'The Joshua Tree' and grammys. It is Pavarotti's mate, Cruz's hero, Live8's Sgt. Pepper,  handshaker of Mandela, Clinton, Bush and Blair. He is there: customary shades, a loud voice, and older and plumper looking than I might have imagined (but then, to be fair, I haven't really followed his career so my memories are probably of an earlier era).  

My wife walks on obliviously as the gates open and Bono drives down to his house.

The car, by the way, was a 6-series convertible BMW. Yes, a convertible with the hood down. All that security and you drive an open-topped car.  

Some thoughts: 

The myth of counter-culture: Rock 'n' Roll was never counter-cultural. Youth culture was never rebellion. This is its marketing-hype, its stance. But its idols and icons aspire only to join the list of the wealthy. Aspiring to wealth is not counter-culture. It is conformance.

Historically, it is also corporate. 

The biggest change if you make it to the top of the 'A' -list is that you become the boss. They are your staff out there in the garden trimming roses, watching through binoculars etc. You are the boss. You may have grown up in the Dublin suburbs with no immediate prospect of doing anything other than  working for someone else, but by virtue of your rock 'n' roll career, and its pact with the corporate giants of the media industry, you have become the boss. And you've achieved this within a single half-lifetime.

The only difference between the Ellison and Bono is that in the celebrity industry, ultimately, the person is the product. Ellison sells software. Bono sells Bono.  In all other respects, it is the normal business of the corporate supra-structure.

The new aristocracy: Meanwhile, your A-list kids will inhabit social networks of great wealth and knowledge. They too will have their hands on the controls of the means of production.  They may complain or 'rebel' , but the kids of the famous are in a gilded vat. Their talents are given best light. Their shortcomings are given best protection. For generations to come, "Grandaddy Bono" will be revered for the wealth he brought to the family.

Here is James Jagger, seemingly a nice 'down-to Earth' guy, talking in The Sunday Times. It sounds like his parents have given him a good emotional frame for his life. He certainly has powerful financial and knowledge networks at his back. He should do very well indeed.

Today we construct our super-class in a new way. But we still have a super-class. And they still elevate themselves above the normal concerns of the mass, like tax. This is a very significant point in Bono's case for, as many commentators have pointed out, there is a connection between developing world debt-relief and the taxation burden in the developed world. Debt-relief is undoubtedly ethical and right, how does the debt ultimately get paid if not then by the nurses, teachers, managers and cleaners of the developed world.

When it comes to tax, the celebrity campaigners exit stage right. Quickly. 

Social-campaigns and leadership of the masses. In some ways, Bono is the ultimate instantiation of an argument that says social-good is done through the awareness-raising role of celebrities. His achievement, as fellow-celebrity Penelope Cruz testifies, is that he brings the light of the world's media to shine on issues of great concern. Perhaps it is since Live Aid and the activities of that other eloquent Irishman, Bob Geldof, that we have happily deployed a model wherein rich but well-known celebrities exhort less-rich people to do more in a good cause.

This may seem paradoxical but, so the argument goes, it is both necessary and a just use of the 'platform' of the celebrity.

Maybe. But it also seems like Society 1.0. It seems slightly dated and hierarchical. As Paul Hawken's book 'Blessed Unrest' points out, the green movement has grown from thousands of little pieces. The green climate change lobby neither has nor needs a global spokesperson. It is a movement of the concerned. The famous who inhabit its ranks never own or lead it, and as Al Gore's recent experience testifies, they often have an uncomfortable relationship with it.

So, is celebrity leadership of poverty-campaigns actually just more of normal corporate culture?  Naomi Klein has provocatively argued that the corporates sell our culture back to us.  And, yes, we were concerned about poverty before any celebrity co-opted the issue. This is just as we are concerned about the fate of the planet.

As Pink Floyd didn't say, "We don't need no celebucation!" 

On Bono.  For all of this, for some reason, I like what I know of Bono. He seems interesting, a mass of contradictions. This, perhaps, is the mystery we call charisma.  He has it.

Hand on heart, if I had the money he has, I cannot say with certainty that I'd do better with it.

This is to mark the passing of Ian Robertson who died on September 7th. Ian, a Labour Councillor in Middleton, was a friend of TALK and contributed to it in its early months. Indeed, I recall his strong conviction that it could only be through the stories of public sector workers that others in the sector could learn. I remember Ian as a creative, principled and kind man whom I first met way back in the early 1990s. He had many great stories of his earlier career as a civil engineer in the Middle East. His partner Ann, also mentioned in the link above, was younger than him, quiet and also very kind. I recall that she worked in Probation. Once I went to a soiree at the small house Ian shared with Ann. I spilled some red wine, which I always regret, and cheated at party games, which I don't.

As they still say on less certain shores, "God Bless." 

Another Part of An Ethnographer In Paradise

I am on the beach at Eze Sur Mer. The day is typically idyllic. Perfect light. 

If I am honest, though, I might sometimes question the idyll. It's hot, very hot. Locals cool themselves under the showers provided along the beach by the municipal authorities. Press and woosh ... warm water sprinkles over the shaggy-haired head of a middle-aged woman. Meanwhile, I am, perhaps with a little too much of the worried parent, making sure that every exposed millimetre of my youngest's face has ingested some suncream. She is wriggling away from this dousing and there's a fat bead of perspiration on my head. I am trying to inspect her shoulders but she escapes and is gone to a game in the pebbles.

But the light, the blue light and the yellow, goes straight into the memory. That's the joy of it. Like the memory is a camera, it needs only the smallest aperture, the slightest invitation, to imprint new memories on a day like this.  Perhaps this is why the sunshine is our idyll. It makes it easier to see ourselves, easier to remember ourselves.

As one scans the horizon there are, I don't know, more than a dozen boats within view. Wait a moment, no, there are much more than a dozen. Scanning right to left, from Beaulieu to where the sea disappears behind the cliffs before Cap d'Ail and Monaco, there must be twenty. There are several of the classic yachts of the rich. But there are other smaller boats too, speedboats and day-trippers. Dead centre as my eye tracks, well away on the horizon, is a magnificent, proud yacht. It is a real yacht with translucent sails tall to the wind.

Behind me somewhere a double-decked train comes out of the tunnel that hides Eze Sur Mer from Cap d'Ail. It is racing from Monaco to Nice. Behind that, beyond my view, the Basse Corniche is doubtless parading its exotic combination of Renault amongst Bentley, Citroen amongst Aston Martin. Peugeot. Black Mercedes. Peugeot again. And then, overhead to the beach, there is a deep rumble as one, two and then three heavy, propellered planes of the French Air Force come flying low over the cliffs. I recognise the red circle insignia from my schoolboy history books. It is the first time I have seen it or thought of it since. I may not be an aircraft expert then, but I know enough to recognise from their hull-like shapes that these are seaplanes. Soon, my family are treated to the theatre of these strange hybrids arcing wide towards Beaulieu before defining and landing upon a strip of sea amongst all the boats out there beyond Eze Sur Mer. They do not stop, but instead churn up white spray before taking off again. There they go, one, two, three, back up off the sea, dripping wet, back into the skies. They repeat this landing procedure three more times, each time winding their way over Eze Sur Mer and Beaulieu before they finally turn back over the cliffs and disappear to whichever air station they came from.

We feel like applauding but the locals look nonplussed.

Somewhere else, beyond the enclave of villas that hum with air-conditioning units, electric blinds and cooling fans, there is, doubtless, a nuclear power station silently injecting the vines of the national grid with that most necessary of energies, electricity. The Riviera is electricity-hungry.

And France is a technologically sophisticated and seemingly comfortable nation. This is perfectly expressed in the Riviera. There is no tension between the expressed idyll of the Riviera and its technology. Technology, from the bikini to the Bentley, the cooling fan to the yacht, the shower on the beach and the wine-cooler in the kitchen, is part of the Riviera's image of itself. This is no rural idyll. It is a sophisticated playground of man, technology and nature. Take away the technology and the idyll would diminish. No wonder James Bond returns here so often. In his own native England, the Bentley is parked away from the beach, the seaplanes would be an interruption, and no millionaire would ever buy a villa with a railway at its back.

And so, as I write I am again in mind of the Hopper brothers' provocative book "The Puritan Gift" wherein, amongst many other things, they tell of how America learned its technological skills from France. Not England, nor Germany. But from France. On another occasion, in the privilege of the company of William Hopper and David Howardin the Athenaeum in London, I was interested to hear David argue, perhaps with some regret, that if one really wanted to award a prize to one nation for its technological innovation and engineering sophistication, it would have to go to France.

For me, a Mancunian, this was news. But on reflection, I began to understand. And now, in a new light of understanding this history, I think that a failure to institutionalise its own native technological brilliance has been a blight on British governments since the industrial revolution.  Britain has done well with banking and financial services, but this was always London's business. Technology, innovation, and the ability to disturb the established order of things, were the business of the North of England and Scotland. And here, when it comes to institutionalising our knowledge and culture, we've done badly. We are nothing like the French.

And that is not good news. Not if you are from the North.