Watching the English

by Kate Fox

‘I know the world may have turned upside-down and inside-out quite a bit in the past ten years,

but the English haven’t changed.

On some aspects of Englishness, for example, I now have survey data to add weight to my original fieldwork findings. On others, I have more extensive field-research or experiments to back up early observations and hunches.

The ‘defining characteristics’ of Englishness remain essentially unchanged, but there are now some qualifications to add, some subtle nuances I hadn’t noticed before, some emerging behaviour codes that need deciphering …

‘make the strange familiar and the familiar strange’.

the book has demystified this unfamiliar culture for them, helping them to understand the very strange behaviour of their English

‘Your book saved my marriage! I thought my English husband/wife must be mentally ill, but now I realise he/she is just being English!’

the alcohol is part reward, part Dutch courage.

Women’s Institute

‘grammar’ of English behaviour.

Native speakers can rarely explain the grammatical rules of their own language. In the same way, those who are most ‘fluent’ in the rituals, customs and traditions of a particular culture generally lack the detachment necessary to explain the ‘grammar’ of these practices in an intelligible manner. That is why we have anthropologists.

Casual Friday custom?’

participating in the life and culture of the people one is studying, to gain a true insider’s perspective on their customs and behaviour, while simultaneously observing them as a detached, objective scientist.

participant-observation method and the role of the participant observer.

I described the bitchy squabbles in which these two Inner voices engaged every time a conflict arose between my roles as honorary member of the tribe and detached scientist.

You try your best to be a maverick iconoclast, and they turn you into a textbook.)

‘There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has the right to blame us.’

This is not because I consider the English to be intrinsically more interesting than other cultures but because I have a rather wimpish aversion to the dirt, dysentery, killer insects, ghastly food and primitive sanitation that characterise the mud-hut ‘tribal’ societies studied by my more intrepid colleagues. In the macho field of ethnography, my avoidance of discomfort and irrational preference for cultures with indoor plumbing are regarded as quite unacceptably feeble,

Yet

my father – Robin Fox, a much more eminent anthropologist – had been training me for this role

since I was a baby.

Unlike most infants, who spend their early days lying in a pram or cot, staring at the ceiling or at those dangly-animal mobile things, I was strapped to a Cochiti Indian cradle-board and propped upright, at strategic observation points around the house, to...

search for rules.

regularities and consistent patterns in the natives’ behaviour,

You can tell a representative selection of natives about your observations of their behaviour patterns, and ask them if you have correctly identified the rule, convention or principle behind these patterns. You can break the (hypothetical) rule, and look for signs of disapproval, or indeed active ‘sanctions

principle, regulation or maxim governing individual conduct a standard of discrimination or estimation; a criterion, a test, a measure an exemplary person or thing; a guiding example a fact, or the statement of a fact, which holds generally good; the normal or usual state of things.

it is a quality or behaviour pattern that is common enough, or marked enough, to be noticeable and significant.

by ‘culture’ I mean the sum of a society’s or social group’s patterns of behaviour, customs, way of life, ideas, beliefs and values.

‘cross-cultural universals’ – practices, customs and beliefs found in all human societies

Every human activity, without exception, including natural biological functions such as eating and sex, is hedged about with complex sets of rules and regulations, dictating precisely when, where, with whom and in what manner the activity may be performed. Animals just do these things; humans make an almighty song and dance about it. This is known as ‘civilisation

American cultural imperialism

we are living in a dumbed-down, homogenised McWorld,

Guardian-reading, lefty-liberal product of the anti-Thatcher generation,

The principal effect of globalisation, as far as I can tell, has been an increase in nationalism and tribalism, a proliferation of struggles for independence, devolution and self-determination, and a resurgence of concern about ethnicity and cultural identity in almost all parts of the world, including the so-called United Kingdom.

correlation is not causation,

Just because people everywhere want to wear Nike trainers and drink Coke does not necessarily mean that they are any less fiercely concerned about their cultural identity

let alone

Although England is a highly class-conscious culture, the real-life ways in which the English think about social class

we judge social class in much more subtle and complex ways: precisely how you arrange, furnish and decorate your terraced house; not just the make of car you drive, but whether you wash it yourself on Sundays, take it to a car wash or rely on the English weather to sluice off the worst of the dirt for you.

where, when, how and with whom you eat and drink; where and how you shop; the clothes you wear; the pets you keep; how you spend your free time; and, especially, the words you use and how you pronounce them.

thinking about class through the perspectives of the different themes mentioned above.

Orwell’s point that such differences ‘fade away the moment any two Britons are confronted by a European’

ethnic minorities are included, by definition, in any attempt to define Englishness.

academics seem less interested in the processes by which resident immigrant minority cultures can shape the behaviour patterns, customs, ideas, beliefs and values of the countries in which they settle.

their influence on many aspects of English culture has been, and is, considerable.

‘acculturation

whether through choice or circumstance or both, have adopted more of the host culture’s customs, values and behaviour patterns

‘cherry-picking’ Englishness.

we can all, at least to some extent, ‘choose’ our degree of Englishness.

cherry-picking.