Up the Hill
The other day I was taking my mother-in-law for a visit to the hospital for a check-up. On the way we were talking about her childhood in Rhode Island. Some of her recollections were familiar: she was still intrigued by the extent to which migrants from some countries chose to live only with people from the same country and no-one else, whereas others were far more relaxed, happy in a cosmopolitan neighbourhood. But then she broached a topic I hadn’t heard her talk about before, when she started talking about the houses of those who chose to live ‘up’.
Her father had been successful, coming to the US from Italy in his late teenage years, eventually running his own business, making “a lot of money”. She had lived with her parents in a beautiful house in Warwick. When her husband-to-be had asked if he could call round to see her, she told him she could be found in “the biggest house on the street”. It was true, and while a little boasting was acceptable, she made it clear her family didn’t want to be seen as living ‘up’. I first thought she was talking about being literally up the hill, to Federal Hill where many Italian migrants moved over the years. Then I began to think she meant up on College Hill, where the affluent homes are to be found, close to Brown University. As she continued to reminisce, I could see she was talking about social class, and that didn’t require you to be on the top of any particular hill: just demonstrably on top of the heap!
As I thought about our conversation later that day, my mind wandered on to my years as a student studying social anthropology. Of the many books I read, one that that fascinated me was Political Systems of Highland Burma.[i] This study of the Kachin and Shan peoples heralded Edmund Leach’s emergence as a major figure in social anthropology, and the decisive break he made with the orthodoxy that was well entrenched when his book appeared in the early 1950s. He had already undertaken some fieldwork as an anthropologist, but in 1939 he was going to study the Kachin Hills of Burma. There at the outbreak of war, he joined the Burma Army, serving through to the summer of 1945, (ending up as a Major). During his time in Burma, Leach was able to study many hill tribes, and grew very familiar with the Kachin people, even serving as commander of the Kachin irregular forces. Trying to continue research as an anthropologist while fighting with the guerilla forces proved challenging, however, even more so when he lost all his field notes at one point.
Let me explain a little of the background to his research. At first glance, there appeared to be two distinct groups living in Highland Burma, whose histories could be traced back for at least 150 years. The Shan were to be found in the fertile plains of the valleys, affluent, growing rice in paddy fields, and predominantly Buddhists. They were a hierarchical people, with princes ruling over each of the various (relatively small) areas where they lived. In contrast, the hills comprised a much larger area and were occupied by the scattered Kachin. Ideal for an anthropologist, two groups to study, as well as the interactions between them.
However, one of the oddities which Leach observed was that many Shan were the descendants of former Kachin, who had been assimilated into “the more sophisticated ways of Buddhist-Shan culture”. Moreover, he argued that the sophistication of Shan culture and its economic organisation were largely determined by the physical environment, wet rice agriculture concentrated in the small valley areas of the country. The further he studied, he found the Shan had, for generations, been assimilating Kachins into their relatively stable society.
In contrast, the Kachins were a diverse group, with great variations in language, (a characteristic not unlike the dialects of regions in the UK prior to the 20th Century), sharing a sense of common identity, but often with different vocabularies and expressions, even quite distinct behaviour. The Kachin were not Buddhists, and most fell into one of two political groupings: some were gumlao, democratic, small scale settlements, with the (small) village as the political entity; while others were gumsa, territorially larger groupings, with a more elaborate and hierarchical system, usually with a prince as the head (apparently acquiring the position by aristocratic birthright).
A conventional social anthropological study would have looked at each of these three groups. Carefully studying language, politics, economics, rituals and kinship practices, the researcher would be able to show how they functioned, demonstrating how each of the elements in the society worked together to create a stable whole. Anthropologists had developed this ‘functional’ approach to their discipline, seeing societies as stable continuing entities, the parts in harmony, while individuals passed through, as it were, as they moved from one phase of life to another. In this framework, while individuals changed through the course of their lives, society continued as it had always had been. Sounds familiar? We used to have that view of modern organisations, too, continuing in perpetuity, while employees were slotted into the various roles the company established, dispensable, mere occupants of a position for a period of time.
Returning to the UK with just enough material, Edmund Leach completed a PhD at the LSE, and from that research he wrote this now famous monograph. He took a very different approach. As one contemporary reviewer noted: “This book is particularly important to me for two reasons. First, it provides a lot of factual evidence against treating linguistic, ethnic, cultural or kin groups as clearly-defined, exclusive and internally consistent. Though the book is about “the Kachin and Shan”, he does not see them as different in any essential way. In fact, he sees valley and hill societies as economically inextricable and culturally symbiotic. The book begins with an account of an old man who for 70 years had been both Kachin and Shan. Secondly, I appreciate that his argument is not based on viewing social systems as stable through time, but, quite the opposite, rather is based on explicitly viewing social systems as unstable: “what can be observed now is just a momentary configuration of a totality existing in a state of flux.””[ii] Radical thoughts in the 1950s.
How did these people interact? Leach summarised his views by observing: “[in] the Kachin Hills area – a social system exists. The valleys between the hills are included in this area so that the Shan and the Kachin are, at this level, part of a single social system. Within this major social system there are, at any given time, a number of significantly different sub-systems which are inter-dependent. Three such sub-systems might be typed as Shan, Kachin gumsa and Kachin gumlao. Considered simply as patterns of organisation these sub-systems may be thought of as variations on a theme. The Kachin gumsa organisation modified in one direction would be indistinguishable from the Shan; modified in another direction it would be indistinguishable from the Kachin gumlao. Viewed historically, such modifications actually occur, and it is legitimate to talk of Kachins becoming Shans or of Shans becoming Kachins.” [iii]
This was central to Leach’s view that “conceptual models of society are necessarily equilibrium systems; real societies can never be in equilibrium”.[iv] This was a carefully aimed blow at the orthodoxy of the profession. That traditional model of society advocated by the leading social anthropologists of the time, Evans-Pritchard in Oxford and Meyer Fortes in Cambridge, was one of organic equilibrium, with all the parts of society working together to ensure ongoing homeostasis. Edmund Leach threw a bombshell into that happy agreement: conceptual models, models in our heads, might be like that, but ‘real’ societies, the societies we confront in life are in a state of constant flux. It was a major step forward from the sociological theorem of the ‘definition of the situation’, later to be called the social construction of reality, famously stated early on in the sentence “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences”.[v]
If Political Systems of Highland Burma came to mind, it was not just because of the importance of constructs and models, of dividing people in society as being ‘up’ or ‘down’. No, there was another, somewhat paradoxical reason: in Burma, the rich lived at the bottom of the hill, and the poor above. Anthropology makes you rethink: the upper class can be down below!
In England, the reverse was true. What was physically ‘upper’ was the church, and for many centuries the church accompanied by the manor house was on the higher ground. The symbolism was clear: rich on top of the poor, perhaps one reason for the terminology ‘upper class’. As set out physically, the message was clear, one I was aware of from an early age.
For the first few years of my life I lived in Northolt, a London suburb. Our back garden adjoined Bellevue Park, and we had a gate at the end of the garden that allowed me to go out. Standing by our fence, I could look up the hill, at the top of which stood St Mary’s Church, a 13th Century building. If you walked up towards the church, to the right (the east) was a rather untidy area enclosed by trees, with small areas that turned into tiny ponds when the rain fell, especially during the spring an autumn. This area was skirted by a path to the right, running along the back of Court Farm Road. Hard to see now at ground level, but from above one of the features of this site is revealed. In the centre, you can still see the traces of the original manor house. A determined explorer walking around would also realise the manor house had been surrounded by a moat, those ponds the last remnants. Church and Manor House on top of the hill.
The history of Northolt and its church and manor house is typical of so many parts of England, a mixture of aristocrats, shady deals and disasters. The original landowner was Geoffrey de Mandeville, one of William the 1st followers, and later it was acquired by Geoffrey de Wychingham, one time Sheriff and Mayor of London. A manor house was built in the 11th Century (and there might have been something less solid before), but it had a sorry history, sold and transferred many times, until eventually one Alice Francis tore down part of the house and sold off the timber in the 14th Century.[vi] From then on, the Manor House began a slow decline, and appears to have been finally demolished by the beginning of the 18th Century. There is now another building, at times also called the Manor House, to the west of the church. Still standing when we lived in Northolt, my mother wanted to move up, up there, but it was way beyond dad’s income!
As for the church itself, it is one of the smallest in London, its nave a mere 15 yards (14 m) by 8 yards (7.3 m). The church was built around 1290 and gradually expanded, with the chancel added in 1521, the bell tower in the 16th century and twin buttresses placed against the west wall around 1718 for fear the church might slip down the hill! Despite its small size, I recently discovered the church played an important role in the ecclesiastical life of London; from the 13th century to 1873 its Rector served as the Bishop of London; and it was the first Anglican parish to appoint a female Rector, the Reverend Pamela Walker.[vii]
Up or down. We associate altitude with class and success. It is a complex relationship. Right now, there is much talk in the US of “draining the swamp”. This is not about Florida, however, but is one of the electioneering calls made by Donald Trump about what he was going to do when he arrived in Washington, this low-lying ‘swamp’ infested by politicians, lobbyists and other people with influence. If they were ever seen as part of an upper class, he portrayed them as bottom dwellers. Down, but not out: despite the talk, rather than any draining taking place, so far the new administration seems to be adding more to the swamp than before. It is still a nasty and dangerous place!
Once we move into the territory of seeing some people being ‘up’, then other variations on this theme emerge. For example, in the Australian vernacular some members of society are described as ‘up themselves’, another way of describing the affluent consumed by their own self-importance, with rather coarser undertones (the phrase ‘so far up themselves they could gargle’ was one of my favourites!). Australia is the place we chop down ‘tall poppies’, and you certainly don’t want to stand out or be up yourself!
My mother-in-law didn’t want to be up, my mother did. My mother-in-law’s family could have moved up but didn’t want to do so; my mother couldn’t move up, and did want to do so (we did eventually move to a much classier house and suburb, when my grandparents moved in with us!). Is the aspiration to move up more powerful when you can’t? Edmund Leach had it right. It isn’t about the reality, it is about how you see yourself. Satisfied, like the family of a successful Italian migrant who was living a comfortable life; still not satisfied, like the wife of a secondary school teacher who refused to apply to be a headmaster. The way we see the world has real consequences: in apparently egalitarian societies, many people still want to move ‘up in the world’.
[i] By E R Leach, first published in 1954 by Bell, and then reprinted in 1964 with a note by the author. It is this edition I bought that year, and will be the source of subsequent quotes.
[ii] Harold Amoss Jr, American Anthropologist, Vol. 57, page 362, 1955
[iii] Op Cit, pages 60-61
[iv] Op Cit, page 4: this being in Leach’s new preface to the 1964 edition of the book
[v] W I Thomas and D S Thomas, The Child in America, Knopf, 1928, page 532
[vi] You want all the details? I can refer you to: Diane K Bolton, H P F King, Gillian Wyld and D C Yaxley, ‘Northolt: Introduction’, in A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 4, Harmondsworth, Hayes, Norwood With Southall, Hillingdon With Uxbridge, Ickenham, Northolt, Perivale, Ruislip, Edgware, Harrow With Pinner, ed. T F T Baker, J S Cockburn and R B Pugh (London, 1971), pp. 109-113. This is available through British History Online <http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/middx/vol4/pp109-113>
[vii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mary_with_St_Richard,_Northolt
