Photos

This was taken at a recent lurcher and terrier show. These people stood out from the crowd. I hunted for this shot like a circling shark! I did not want to ask for it as I wanted it to take them naturally.This show was held in Selkirk much to my surprise as I associate lurcher keeping with the North East of England. But there were terriers too and so attracted these people who had terriers with them, although the book this woman is carrying is about lurchers. Field sports people are a breed in themslves (if you will forgive the pun). So who are these people I mused ?. No jeans and white trainers for them. They look like the landed gentry. The scrawny tweedieness of the man seems somehow typical. But typical of what? Typical of a type that owns land and employ beaters for pheasant shoots etc. I am stereotyping now but enjoying myself in the process. This is what people watching is about...the guessing game. Are these the "upper crust" ? perhaps not but maybe the next layer. And about class, the popular media seems to have air brushed the notion of class. Yet if we are a classless society (titter, titter!) then why do the media oft refer to an underclass? If there is an underclass then there must surely be a class above that..and even above that? But do forgive me..this musing is all very tongue in the cheek. My sociology course books were consigned to the attic almost twenty years ago. I have had to have a quick google to recall in any detail the class theories of Max Weber and Karl Marx. Oh, and there was Durkheim who had something to say about suicide and class. He also put forward the idea of anomie. Interesting.
Oh, a line has just come into my head; mind you, it's been hiding there for years and years..."dichotomous relationship to the means of production" ah ah sounds good eh? It refers to Marxist theory ...can't remember where I got it but it has stuck: Maybe I used it in an essay (likely pinched the line)but it sound awfie clever. Dichotomy..now there is a good word to use in sociology essays.
lesson over :)