4 ms·

"Fisher grew up in the East Midlands town of Loughborough with working-class conservative parents – his father an engineer, his mother a cleaner." As a Canadia

by drpgq 6y ago

"Fisher grew up in the East Midlands town of Loughborough with working-class conservative parents – his father an engineer, his mother a cleaner." As a Canadian engineer, I've always found what exactly a UK engineer is somewhat murky. Growing up, if someone told me their father was an engineer I would never think working class. I've lived in Germany too and having an engineering degree was a big deal there, so I know it isn't a European thing, well at least pre-Brexit.

ardy42 6y ago
> As a Canadian engineer, I've always found what exactly a UK engineer is somewhat murky. Growing up, if someone told me their father was an engineer I would never think working class. I've lived in Germany too and having an engineering degree was a big deal there, so I know it isn't a European thing, well at least pre-Brexit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer#UK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer#UK: > In the UK, "engineering" has more recently been erroneously styled as an industrial sector consisting of employers and employees loosely termed "engineers" who include tradespeople. However, knowledgeable practitioners reserve the term "engineer" to describe a university-educated professional of ingenuity represented by the Chartered (or Incorporated) Engineer qualifications.[23] A large proportion of the UK public incorrectly thinks of "engineers" as skilled tradespeople or even semi-skilled tradespeople with a high school education. Also, many UK skilled and semi-skilled tradespeople falsely style themselves as "engineers". This has created confusion in the eyes of some members of the public in understanding what professional engineers actually do, from fixing car engines, television sets and refrigerators (technicians, handymen) to designing and managing the development of aircraft, spacecraft, power stations, infrastructure and other complex technological systems (engineers).[citation needed] It kinda sounds like "engineer" in UK usage encompasses might roles that I'd call "technicians" as an American.
- mc32 6y ago
  There was a time in the US when blue collar jobs tried to spruce things up a bit by adding the term engineer somewhere. Garbage worker became sanitation engineer (not the people engineering separation of recyclables, etc., but your neighborhood garbage truck driver, got example).
  - worik 6y ago
    Hurumph How many people here call themselves "software engineers" when they never went to engineering school?
  - sjburt 6y ago
    Sanitation engineer was always a joke, I think. But engineer also referred to train operators and the third crew position on an airliner is typically a "flight engineer" so there is something there.
Barrin92 6y ago
class membership isn't degree or salary dependent. East Midlands is a traditional blue collar neighbourhood, and you can be an actual engineer who is still situated in that environment, or an artist or whatever else. Hell, you can be a physician and live in a blue collar culture. This is the actual difference between Europe and North America. In the US people strongly stratify by income and schooling. In Germany you can be a 'working class' software developer. I'm German, the first person of my family to go to university, but my social circle overwhelmingly stayed non-academic and blue collar. I'd still describe myself as working class. I do not feel comfortable in the upper middle-class culture that a lot of my classmates in uni came from and never assimilated into it. This was also true for Mark Fisher, which is why I think the description makes sense. As the article points out he often just scraped by financially and wrote in unconvential ways from an outsiders perspective. He was fascinated with the influence of mass and pop-culture on social life. He was not your typical academic humanities character. A lot of the people at the CCRU weren't.
jmfldn 6y ago
Engineer can mean anything from aerospace engineer to someone who fixes boilers in UK. I.e.someone might say they're a boiler 'engineer' but they didn't build or design the thing. It doesn't have a single meaning here. Others might say technician.

by drpgq 6y ago

ardy42 6y ago

> As a Canadian engineer, I've always found what exactly a UK engineer is somewhat murky. Growing up, if someone told me their father was an engineer I would never think working class. I've lived in Germany too and having an engineering degree was a big deal there, so I know it isn't a European thing, well at least pre-Brexit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer#UK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer#UK: > In the UK, "engineering" has more recently been erroneously styled as an industrial sector consisting of employers and employees loosely termed "engineers" who include tradespeople. However, knowledgeable practitioners reserve the term "engineer" to describe a university-educated professional of ingenuity represented by the Chartered (or Incorporated) Engineer qualifications.[23] A large proportion of the UK public incorrectly thinks of "engineers" as skilled tradespeople or even semi-skilled tradespeople with a high school education. Also, many UK skilled and semi-skilled tradespeople falsely style themselves as "engineers". This has created confusion in the eyes of some members of the public in understanding what professional engineers actually do, from fixing car engines, television sets and refrigerators (technicians, handymen) to designing and managing the development of aircraft, spacecraft, power stations, infrastructure and other complex technological systems (engineers).[citation needed] It kinda sounds like "engineer" in UK usage encompasses might roles that I'd call "technicians" as an American.

mc32 6y ago
There was a time in the US when blue collar jobs tried to spruce things up a bit by adding the term engineer somewhere. Garbage worker became sanitation engineer (not the people engineering separation of recyclables, etc., but your neighborhood garbage truck driver, got example).
- worik 6y ago
  Hurumph How many people here call themselves "software engineers" when they never went to engineering school?
- sjburt 6y ago
  Sanitation engineer was always a joke, I think. But engineer also referred to train operators and the third crew position on an airliner is typically a "flight engineer" so there is something there.

Barrin92 6y ago

class membership isn't degree or salary dependent. East Midlands is a traditional blue collar neighbourhood, and you can be an actual engineer who is still situated in that environment, or an artist or whatever else. Hell, you can be a physician and live in a blue collar culture. This is the actual difference between Europe and North America. In the US people strongly stratify by income and schooling. In Germany you can be a 'working class' software developer. I'm German, the first person of my family to go to university, but my social circle overwhelmingly stayed non-academic and blue collar. I'd still describe myself as working class. I do not feel comfortable in the upper middle-class culture that a lot of my classmates in uni came from and never assimilated into it. This was also true for Mark Fisher, which is why I think the description makes sense. As the article points out he often just scraped by financially and wrote in unconvential ways from an outsiders perspective. He was fascinated with the influence of mass and pop-culture on social life. He was not your typical academic humanities character. A lot of the people at the CCRU weren't.

jmfldn 6y ago

Engineer can mean anything from aerospace engineer to someone who fixes boilers in UK. I.e.someone might say they're a boiler 'engineer' but they didn't build or design the thing. It doesn't have a single meaning here. Others might say technician.