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This chapter turns to one that refers to life-style, or to the element of refinement in life-style. Social hierarchy was greater before World War II than it is today in South Downs, for the postwar period saw a growing emphasis on egalitarianism. It explores the hierarchy of wealth in South Downs in the 1920s. It also covers the network of families at the upper end of the social spectrum, in order to reveal how social distance or hierarchy was expressed symbolically. It then addresses the people who were considered middling farmers and who did eat with their workers in the 1920s—that is, the middling, one-table households. The two-table theory included a crucial set of ideas about work itself. The one- and two-table theories of social hierarchy produced very different hierarchies of standing. On the one hand, the two-table theory served to distance the landholding elite from working people.

This chapter explores the reasoning that underlies people's judgments when they rank occupations within the local hierarchy. It first compares the occupational system of South Downs with that of the California community. The two criteria that underlie the system in South Downs in addition to wealth are occupational importance and asymmetry. Wealth entails a semiotic system for ordering occupations and individuals in a hierarchy of standing, yet this function is morally obnoxious in local thought. Moreover, the chapter turns to the occupation of landholder, the most prominent in the district. It investigates the conceptual basis for this prominence. All three criteria presented play a role in people's judgments about the standing of occupations in the district. A man's competence on the job and community-mindedness genuinely count in people's estimation of him, and they provide him with avenues of achievement that he may pursue with conviction.

This chapter discusses refinement after World War II. The social hierarchy in South Downs has changed significantly since the 1920s. Until 1969, full employment prevailed in New Zealand. Most people believe unequivocally that hierarchical distinctions are no longer very pronounced in South Downs. The post-World War II era was marked by strong egalitarian pressures that led to the abandonment of many of the overt symbols by which people of refinement distanced themselves from others. The “genteel families” in South Downs, and the role of refinement in the local social order are explored. Genteel patterns are disparaged by the rough especially, who see the toffs in general as artificial and status-conscious, and toffy men as effeminate.

This book is about a small, sheep-farming community on the South Island of New Zealand, and its central argument is that the local system of social standing and conceptions of self are grounded in historically variable, cultural systems of meaning. The book chiefly concentrates on the hierarchy of the district of South Downs, and only secondarily on Glassford and Midhurst. Two main theoretical principles underlie this book. The first is that social standing, achievement, and personal worth or identity are central to most social systems. The second principle is that status systems are grounded on systems of meaning. The issue of gender is also addressed. The woman's achievement of gender identity through her activities both in the home and in voluntary public service may be further regarded as an analogue to the man's achievement of gender identity through work.

This chapter deals with the issue of farming ability. Farming ability was used in certain contexts to judge social honor. Most farmers display considerable concern about the way others regard their work. The conservative farmer believes that healthy, robust sheep are more profitable than smaller ones of lower quality. The conservative farmers contend that their progressive counterparts take extraordinary risks by maintaining such high stock numbers. Although the linked communities of Glassford, Midhurst, and South Downs are distinct reference groups, at a higher level they are also conjoined. A farm family draws its identity primarily from its standing in the home district; yet it can have a wider reputation and occupy a position in the broader status system of linked communities as well.

The cultural ideas underlying occupation in South Downs has concentrated on two hierarchical orders: first, the total occupational system of the community, or the pattern that emerges when all the jobs of the district are considered as a whole; and second, the occupational system of local farmers. The principle of farming ability is grounded on explicit and complex theories about how best to produce sheep and wool, while that of refinement is rooted in a set of ideas about the “first four ships,” the differences between Scots and English, and the like. People in California seemed to assign the criterion of wealth greater weight than people in South Downs. The Joneses raise a crucial point about the contestedness of the systems of meaning behind the local social order. The accumulation of wealth is a moral goal in South Downs.

This chapter addresses how local farm families judge who is wealthier than whom. The beginning phase of the farm's developmental cycle is marked by constant struggle to meet the mortgage payment, and this has a significant effect on a young family's lives. The income tax system effectively reduces the range of differences in spendable income among community members. In South Downs, the landholder's wealth is not assessed in terms of the size of the farm or the number of sheep it carries. The farmers in South Downs assume that the hierarchy of wealth in the district is natural, in that it reflects certain objective economic constraints or factors that they all face. The spirit of capitalism more accurately describes the California case than that of South Downs. The analysis of this chapter reveals an important principle, that is, the naturalization of the criterion of wealth in local thought.

In the spring of 1851, the Lanes and the Pooles moved some forty miles west to another seacoast town, because Lane had lost his faith in the climate of Hastings. Worthing looked more squarely to the south than Hastings, and was protected on the north by the chalk South Downs. The Board of Health reckoned Worthing to be the second healthiest place in England, another testimonial of the unshakable Victorian belief in the salubrity of sea air. The population in 1851 was just 5,370, but Worthing boasted several good hotels and had been connected with London by rail for six years. For their first two years at Worthing, the Lanes and Pooles resided at West Terrace, just across the esplanade from the stony beach in what Sophia described as a “Sea house”.