OK, perhaps not an effect - correlation is not causation, as every scientist knows - but at the very least, one must acknowledge that the association of these movements with the rise of globalization is a striking coincidence. 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 - indeed, many are prepared to fight and die for their nation, religion, territory, culture or whatever aspect of 'tribal' identity is perceived to be at stake.
The economic influence of American corporate giants may indeed be overwhelming, and even pernicious, but their cultural impact is perhaps less significant than either they or their enemies would like to believe. Given our deeply ingrained tribal instincts, and increasing evidence of fragmentation of nations into smaller and smaller cultural units, it does not make sense to talk of a world of six billion people becoming a vast monoculture. The spread of globalization is undoubtedly bringing changes to the cultures it reaches, but these cultures were not static in the first place, and change does not necessarily mean the abolition of traditional values. Indeed, new global media such as the Internet have been an effective means of promoting traditional cultures - as well as the global sub-culture of anti-globalization activists.
Within Britain, despite obvious American cultural influences, there is far more evidence of increasing tribalization than of any reduction in cultural diversity. The fervour, and power, of Scottish and Welsh nationalists does not seem to be much affected by their taste for American soft drinks, junk food or films. Ethnic minorities in Britain are if anything increasingly keen to maintain their distinctive cultural identities, and the English are becoming ever more fretful about their own cultural 'identity crisis'. In England, regionalism is endemic, and escalating (Cornish 'nationalists' are increasingly vociferous, and there has been some half-joking speculation that Yorkshire will be the next to demand devolution), and there is considerable resistance to the idea of being part of Europe, let alone part of any global monoculture.
So, I see no reason to be put off my attempt to understand Englishness by global warnings about the imminent extinction of this or any other culture.
CLASS AND RACE
When this book was in the planning stages, almost everyone I talked to about it asked whether I would have a chapter on class. My feeling all along was that a separate chapter would be inappropriate: class pervades all aspects of English life and culture, and will therefore permeate all the areas covered in this book.
Although England is a highly class-conscious culture, the real-life ways in which the English think about social class - and determine a person's position in the class structure - bear little relation either to simplistic three-tier (upper, middle, working) models, or to the rather abstract alphabetical systems (A, B, C1, C2, D, E), based entirely on occupation, favoured by market research experts. A schoolteacher and an estate agent would both technically be 'middle class'. They might even both live in a terraced house, drive a Volvo, drink in the same pub and earn roughly the same annual income. But 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 climate to sluice off the worst of the dirt for you. Similar fine distinctions are applied to exactly what, where, when, how and with whom you eat and drink; the words you use and how you pronounce them; where and how you shop; the clothes you wear; the pets you keep; how you spend your free time; the chat-up lines you use and so on.
Every English person (whether we admit it or not) is aware of and highly sensitive to all of the delicate divisions and calibrations involved in such judgements. I will not therefore attempt to provide a crude 'taxonomy' of English classes and their characteristics, but will instead try to convey the subtleties of English thinking about class through the perspectives of the different themes mentioned above. It is impossible to talk about class without reference to homes, gardens, cars, clothes, pets, food, drink, sex, talk, hobbies, etc., and impossible to explore the rules of any of these aspects of English life without constantly bumping into big class dividers, or tripping over the smaller, less obvious ones. I will, therefore, deal with class demarcations as and when I lurch into them or stumble across them.
At the same time, I will try to avoid being 'dazzled' by class differences, remembering Orwell's point that such differences 'fade away the moment any two Britons are confronted by a European' and that 'even the distinction between rich and poor dwindles somewhat when one regards the nation from the outside'. As a self-appointed 'outsider' - a professional alien, if you like - my task in defining Englishness is to search for underlying commonalities, not to exclaim over surface differences.
Race is a rather more difficult issue, and again was raised by all the friends and colleagues with whom I discussed this book. Having noted that I was conveniently avoiding the issues of Scottish, Welsh and Irish national identities by confining my research to 'the English' rather than 'the British' or 'the UK', they invariably went on to ask whether or not Asians, Afro-Caribbeans and other ethnic minorities would be included in my definition of Englishness.
There are several answers to this question. The first is that ethnic minorities are included, by definition, in any attempt to define Englishness. The extent to which immigrant populations adapt to, adopt and in turn influence the culture and customs of their host country, particularly over several generations, is a complex issue. Research tends to focus on the adaptation and adoption elements (usually lumped together as 'acculturation') at the expense of the equally interesting and important issue of influence. This is odd: we acknowledge that short-term tourists can have a profound influence on their host cultures - indeed, the study of the social processes involved has become a fashionable discipline in itself - but for some reason our 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. Although ethnic minorities constitute only about six per cent of the population of this country, their influence on many aspects of English culture has been, and is, considerable. Any 'snapshot' of English behaviour as it is now, such as I am attempting here, will inevitably be coloured by this influence. Although very few of the Asians, Africans and Caribbeans living in England would define themselves as English (most call themselves British, which has come to be regarded as a more inclusive term), they have clearly contributed to the 'grammar' of Englishness.
My second answer to the race question concerns the more well-trodden area of 'acculturation'. Here we come down to the level of the group and the individual, rather than the minority culture as a whole. To put it simply - perhaps too simply - some ethnic-minority groups and individuals are more 'English' than others. By this I mean that some, whether through choice or circumstance or both, have adopted more of the host culture's customs, values and behaviour patterns than others. (This becomes a somewhat more complex issue in the second, third and subsequent generations, as the host culture in question will have been influenced, at least to some degree, by their own forebears.)