It may be that the collectors did not discuss the culture of the people who they collected from because they thought general knowledge amongst their peers and any of their readership who were interested was adequate.

Sons of the minor gentry in the job of country parson 'spotting' the singers may have been socially isolated from their flock. However, they may have tended it, and years of filling in the occupations in the parish register, and flipping back through it to learn who was who, would have given them a good idea of the social structure.

When pointing out that Sharp's singers were not all illiterate peasants, and also towards the end of the book, Harker slips from his strict bourgoisie-proliatariat view of society. As the son of a small builder he would have known full well that village and small town society included many workers who were not simply wage-earners. Research into the workers history and culture is one of the things he calls for in his conclusions.