Genre Publics: Aktuil Magazine and Middle-class Youth in 1970s Indonesia

This paper is devoted to reveal how the concept of the middle class evolved and the peculiarities of its formation abroad at the stage of acquiring mass character. Author reviewes mentions of the middle class, along with the descriptions of its role in society and the state system, are presented in the works of different thinkers. Starting from Aristotle, who singled out the tertiary group of citizens as the basis of democracy; M. Weber, who took into account the criterion of education, qualifications, and skills; T. Veblen, who paid attention to the criterion of consumption to later developments, which consider the criterion of access to high technologies, knowledge and entrepreneurial activity. The paper determines that for a long time, the middle class was considered in the context of the developed countries of its time. It is underlined, that depending on the historical era, it was Rome, Greece, Germany, and the USA. Only in recent decades has there been a trend of increasing interest in the middle class of developing countries, expanding the subject field of middle-class studies in the context of economic inequality due to the involvement of other factors such as racial and gender characteristics. The paper reveals that at various historical stages, the main factors in the formation of the middle class were urbanization and trade, the development of world trade and colonialism, industrial revolutions, enlightenment and the spread of liberal ideals, labor movements and social reforms, development and mass education. Author shows that the second half of the 20th century was a period of mass middle class formation, closely interconnected with postwar recovery after WWII and the formation of welfare states. In particular, one of the most essential factors in the rapid growth of the American middle class, the so-called golden years (1947–1973), was the targeted government policies and social programs of both the postwar period and earlier. Modern welfare states’ crucial role in shaping the middle class, reducing economic inequality, and mitigating the effects of economic crises, is described. This experience has practical value for the formation of the Ukrainian middle class, which is facing significant challenges exacerbated by the ongoing war. The historical context of middle class formation in post-socialist countries has been marked by a lack of political decisions similar to those in the West. This highlights the need for further scientific research on the topic.

The article analyzes the conditions for the formation of the middle class in India. Shown is its important balancing role in the politics and economy of the country. The nature of the definition of "middle class", its special significance in developing countries is considered. Due to the difference in the applied criterion - the initial unit of account (employee, family, population group), due to the weakness of statistical services, the results of sociological studies, statistical estimates of the size of the middle class are often approximate. The work shows that the official and infor-mal (shadow) parts of the middle class coexist in the economies of developing countries in parallel. The pressure of the COVID-19 pandemic on the development of the Indian middle class is taken into account. The article examines the national characteristics of the formation of the middle class inherent in India. Due to the unclear definition of the criteria, the inconsistency of its assessments, the insufficient level of work of statistical organizations, information on the size of the middle class is inaccurate (according to various estimates, about 210-360 million people). Attention is paid to the formation of the rural middle class in India, rural residents make up a significant part of it (estimated at 48-66%).The forecast of the recovery of the Indian middle class ispresented. It is assumed that its quantitative growth, which was observed before the pandemic, and a gradual increase in influence will continue and will allow in the future. The topic is relevant, in demand by the Russian reader.

This chapter investigates the changes in consumption practices of employees of the business process outsourcing(BPO) industry in Mumbai. The city is an interesting place to investigate the emergence of the BPO industry and assess its contribution to the formation of a consumerist new middle class. Impressive economic growth, backed by globalization and liberalization, has given rise to a new middle class in emerging market economies such as India. Workers in the BPO industry are representatives of this newly emerging consumer class. The offshore service outsourcing industry, which comprises the BPO and information technology(IT) services, is widely acknowledged as one of the important sectors contributing to the formation of a new middle class in India. The chapter then explains the data and research methodology, and it presents the empirical findings. The empirical evidence points out that the BPO industry too plays a vital role in bringing about changes in consumption practices and contributing to the formation of a new middle class.

This paper attempts to understand the process of formation of middle class in the Muslim community of India since independence and its emerging political orientations. It questions the popular, rhetorical but hegemonic discourses that tend to portray the “perpetual underdevelopment and dalitinization of the Muslim community” and argues that section of the Muslim community, despite obstacles and challenges, like any other community, has been beneficiary of India's economic growth over the years. While reflecting on the process of formation of Muslim middle class in post-colonial period in India, the paper takes a differentiated view of community, identifies the social and regional variations of formation of Muslim middle class and highlights its main aspirations and orientation and its relationship with the dominant (Hindu) middle class and the Indian state.

In order to ensure irreversible development and stable social-economic conditions of a State, it should have a strong middle class, defining the country’s social and economic development targets. Considering the said, economic policy of development should be directed to the implementation of the measures supporting the formation of the healthy middle class in Georgia. Share of the population belonging to the middle class is still low in Georgia. According to the studies conducted by the World Bank, in 2014 only 7% of the population of Georgia belonged to the middle class. According to the economic- statistical study conducted in Georgia in 2018, share of the population belonging to the middle class in 2016 was 16%. The same study, with exclusion of the employment factor, shows the growth of the said share to 24,6%. Ignoring the employment – very important determinant of the middle class – naturally puts the last figure far from reality. Current income inequality and high level of poverty negatively impact formation of the middle class in the country. In order to form a middle class, Government of Georgia must overcome the problems faced by country’s entrepreneurship and society by means of the purposeful implementation of the rational policy of economic development. Achieving the said target requires: a stable political-economic environment; elaboration of the small, medium business development programs oriented on the inclusive growth, increase the scales of the currently existing program; development of the special professional training and employment programs for the population below the poverty line; promotion of economic activities based on the start of entrepreneurship, development of the start-ups, innovations and advanced technologies.

Part 1 Entrepreneurs: transformation of the Estonian enterprise sector from a planned system towards market economy, Kari Liuhto New Russians and social change, Johan Backman entrepreneurs in contemporary political structures, Galina Eremicheva and Nina Solovieva petty production in Baltic agriculture - Estonian and Lithuanian models, Ilkka Alanen attitudes towards privatization - winners and losers, Meilute Taljunaite and Aleksandras Cesnavicius. Part 2 Wage-earning middle class in formation: formation of class structure under conditions of radical social change - an East European experience, Kazimierz M. Slomczynski the new middle strata in modern Russia, Vladimir Ilyin non-identical twins - the formation of the middle class in Israel, Amir Ben-Porat intragenerational mobility and middle class formation in Estonia, Ellu Saar and Jelena Helemae. Part 3 Managers and professionals: a Russian middle class in formation? social strata and sectional trade unionism in the aviation and coal industries, Peter Fairbrother managerial change in Estonia, Harri Melin on transition to the middle class - professional strategies of young intellectuals in Russia, Victoria Semenova the fate of party functionaries in post-Soviet Russia, Alla Bystrova the middle classes in the Baltic states - theoretical starting points, Markku Kivinen. Part 4 Identity and lifestyle of the middle classes: the middle class and civil society, Mihail Chernysh capitalism and democracy in two Baltic countries, Jouko Nikula class differences in consciousness and reproduction in the Baltics, Raimo Blom increasing differences? social background and the breakthrough of affluence in Finland 1955-1966, Timo Toivonen from status to class - the emergence of a class society in Russia, Timo Piirainen.

Formation of a strong middle class in Georgia requires a development of small and medium entrepreneurship. As a result of implementation of a rational economic policy and realization of the knowledge and technology based approach in this field, increasing the number of employment, improvement of the national enterprise possibilities, enhancing the competitiveness of the production and growth of the overall level of prosperity of population could be achieved. Small and medium enterprises have been growing during the recent years, however, the growth rate is not sufficient. Share of the population belonging to the middle class is still low in Georgia. According to the studies conducted by the World Bank, in 2014 only 7% of the population of Georgia belonged to the middle class. According to the economic statistical study conducted in Georgia in 2018, share of the population belonging to the middle class in 2016 was 16%. The same study, with exclusion of the employment factor, shows the growth of the above-mentioned share to 24,6%. Ignoring the employment – very important determinant of the middle class – naturally puts the last figure far from reality. Current income inequality and high level of poverty negatively impact formation of the middle class in the country. In order to achieve the growth of the small and medium entrepreneurship, and respectively, growth of the middle class share, the following actions should be taken by the Government of Georgia: Increase of the scale of small and medium entrepreneurship programs, maximally inclusion of the regions; Support of the start-ups, formation of innovative economy; Promotion of the entrepreneurial education, formation of the corresponding environmental system for the export oriented industries; Maintaining political and economic stability.

The article considers of macroeconomic indicators dynamics that influence on the middle class formation. Analysis was performed in sufficiently deep dynamics, which allows us to form a representation about the middle class conditions formation, his becoming and directions of perspective development. The above dynamics for fairly a long time period displays almost the whole transformations picture, which appear in the macroeconomy of Ukraine. Selected statistical data depending of the population income from GDP in national currency and in US dollars are presented for conduct such an analysis. An assessment of such macro-indicators as inflation, the level of employment and unemployment, external public debt, etc. is given. Unfortunately, the considered macroeconomic dynamics in the main system-forming middle class indicators cannot be recognized as steadily increasing. But she is allows us to assert with sufficient certainty about the dialectical presence of economic prerequisites for highlighting of the population proportion, which can be attributed to the middle class. Great influence on the population income, and consequently, the middle class, is unemployment, which reflects the state of country’s socio-economic development, the availability of jobs, the quality of educational training, and others. The number of middle class in the country is directly related with migration processes. The specificity of the Ukrainian migration lies in the fact that it has become a characteristic feature of the life way for a significant part of population. The labor migration increasing is accompanied by a certain reorientation of its flows from the traditional east to the west direction. It is emphasized that a stable socio-economic growth of the country is the main factor in the middle class share increasing. The middle class formation is considered as an important criterion for the reforms effectiveness that are being carried out in the country today.

This chapter demonstrates how the formation and expansion of middle classes in Africa have taken place within particular economic and political contexts. Research has either focused on the size of African middle classes and the related implications for development (what the author calls the dimension school) or on their political role (termed the statist school), considering them as too attached to the state to criticize or oppose it. The shortcomings of both approaches, Musyoka argues, can be explained by the middle class’ entanglement in a ‘double middle’ identity. The ‘first middle’ (the vertical middle) relates to class categorizations in terms of upper, middle, and lower classes. From a neo-Marxist perspective, the author argues that the danger of sliding back into poverty creates a potential for aggressive social and political action among members of African middle classes, to avoid downward mobility. The situatedness of African middle classes between poor past generations and a future generation which requires economic support constitutes a ‘second middle’ (horizontal middle). Both the vertical and horizontal identities produce political and social actions based on visions of sustainable incomes and wealth access, which can be contradictory to prevailing theoretical approaches.

Importance of National Industrial Policy for Azerbaijan: Impacts of Education Investments

In the post-reform China, the middle class remains relatively weak despite its expanding size, which is a basic structural feature of the Chinese society. How to develop the Chinese middle class has become one important issue in the middle-class research. It is suggested that three approaches can be relied on to develop Chinese’s middle class: education, expertise, and the market. Based on the three approaches, as well as data from the Survey of Living Conditions of Residents in Megacities, this study analyzes how the middle class is formed in China from the perspective of marketization and market capacity.

Part I: Overview 1. Characterizing the Middle Classes in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, and Urban China, Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao Part II: Changing Profiles 2. Profiling Middle Classes in Taiwan Today, Ming-Chang Tsai, Gang-Hua Fan, Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao and Hong-Zen Wang 3. The Profile of Hong Kong's Middle Classes: Continuities and Discontinuities, Tai-Lok Lui 4. Profiling the Middle Classes in Macao Today, Timothy Ka-Ying Wong and Po-San Wan 5. Profile of Middle Classes in China Today, Chunling Li Part III: Emerging Ethos and Lifestyles 6. Getting Uneasy: The Hong Kong Middle Class's Changing Psychology, Tai-Lok Lui 7. Comparing Socio-Economic Attitudes of the Middle Classes in Taiwan and Hong Kong, Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao and Po-San Wan 8. Homemaking and Middle Class Formation in Urban China, Suo Liu Part IV: Mobility 9. Taiwanese Middle Classes in Shanghai: Causes and Consequences of Skilled Migration, Yen-Fen Tseng 10. Professional Mainlanders in Hong Kong: Profile, Prospect, and Problem, Victor Zheng, Siu-Lun Wong and Cangbai Wang 11. Reality and Expectations: Social Mobility of the Macao Middle Classes, Po-San Wan and Kenneth W.K. Law Part V: New Politics? 12. The Political Ambiguity of Middle Class Activism in Taiwan: The Case of Urban Conservationists in Kaohsiung City, Ming-Sho Ho 13. Emergence of Middle Classes in Urban China Today: Will They Contribute to Democratization in China?, Shigeto Sonoda 14.The Making of the Hong Kong Middle Class in the 1997 Transition and Beyond: A Conflict Perspective, Alvin So

Reviewed by: Kentucky Countryside in Transition: A Streetcar Suburb and the Origins of Middle-Class Louisville, 1850–1910 by Stephanie Bower Katie M. Hemphill Kentucky Countryside in Transition: A Streetcar Suburb and the Origins of Middle-Class Louisville, 1850–1910. By Stephanie Bower. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2016. Pp. xvi, 339. $61.00, ISBN 978-1-62190-200-3.) Much of the literature on class formation in United States has identified the mid-to-late nineteenth century as the period in which a distinctive American middle class began to coalesce. In her meticulously researched new work on Louisville, Kentucky, Stephanie Bower examines the roots of what she terms "a second stage of [middle-class] development" that remade the urban middle class between roughly 1890 and 1910 as a result of migration from the hinterlands (p. 1). Bower's work explores how postbellum economic development and familial resources, skills, and experiences gained over generations shaped the emergence of the new middle class and its growing orientation toward streetcar suburbs. Drawing from forty-two families who owned homes in Cherokee Triangle, a middle-class enclave constructed on Louisville's east side, Bower writes a "collective biography" that spans three generations and provides important evidence about how the middle class developed and defined itself spatially at the turn of the twentieth century (p. 19). Bower's family case studies reveal a number of interesting patterns in the backgrounds of Cherokee Triangle residents, chief among them that they were not, by and large, the descendants of members of Louisville's midcentury middle class. Instead, the Cherokee Triangle residents whom Bower studies descended mostly from rural Kentucky smallholders who made their livings by farming. In the decades after the Civil War, the progenitors of Cherokee Triangle residents relocated to small towns, lured by the expanded commercial opportunities that industrialization and economic growth presented. After a period of residence in small towns, they, or their children, relocated to Louisville in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Bower's findings about Cherokee Triangle residents' migration patterns lead her to argue for the importance of small-town experiences in easing the transition from rural to urban life and in instilling the values and cultural knowledge necessary to pave the way for entrance into the urban middle class. Her findings also prompt her to reevaluate the impulses behind suburban migration. Bower does not discount push factors, such as perceptions that cities were disorderly, unhealthful, and populated by racial and ethnic others, that influenced families of sufficient means to move to suburbs. However, her narrative highlights pull factors, including a desire on the part of people accustomed to rural and [End Page 422] small-town life to reclaim aspects of county living that they left behind. White-collar workers and their families may have depended on urban commerce and industrialization for their economic and social status, but they drew on small-town customs and practices as they defined what that status meant. Bower's book is the culmination of twenty-six years of painstaking and meticulous research in censuses, city directories, and land, property, and church records, among many other sources. The sheer amount of work that it took to compile the biographies of these individuals is impressive, and it has resulted in Bower's presentation of concrete evidence for elements of class formation and patterns of migration that were previously only speculated about or discussed in a general way. The strength of the book—its incredible volume of information—may also be its weakness in the eyes of readers who are drawn to the study for what it has to contribute to the historiography on the middle class more so than for the information it contains about Louisville. The level of detail contained in family stories that span multiple chapters is at times overwhelming. Nevertheless, Bower's work is a significant achievement, and it will undoubtedly appeal to local historians and genealogists as well as to scholars interested in the history of migration, middle-class formation, and the development of suburbs. Katie M. Hemphill University of Arizona Copyright © 2017 The Southern Historical Association

Making Sense of the Postwar Middle Class Charles L. Ponce de Leon (bio) Lawrence R. Samuel. The American Middle Class: A Cultural History. New York: Routledge2014. 174pp. Selected bibliography and index. $135.00 (cloth); $29.95 (paper). Janice M. Traflet. A Nation of Small Shareholders: Marketing Wall Street after World War II. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013. xiv + 242 pp. Notes, essay on sources, and index. $45.00. Louis Hyman. Debtor Nation: The History of America in Red Ink. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011. 392pp. Illustrations, notes, references, and index. $24.95. For several decades, politicians and much of the American public have obsessed about the fate of the “middle class,” a concept so protean and elastic it has become almost meaningless. Being middle class can refer to income, net worth, or one’s material standard of living. It can mean education or having a particular kind of job or career. For most Americans, however, it also stands for something more nebulous: beliefs and values that transcend socioeconomic categories and make “middle class” a more widely embraced identity in the United States than in other advanced industrialized nations. The vast majority of Americans—roughly 90 percent in most surveys—think of themselves as middle class, making appeals to the middle class the modern equivalent of nineteenth-century appeals to “the people.” Social scientists have long been interested in this phenomenon and have produced some notable works exploring its political and cultural implications. So, too, have historians. But our contributions have mostly focused on “middle-class formation” in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As a result, we know a great deal about how the eighteenth-century “middling sort” became a middle class of entrepreneurs and small proprietors, and how the emergence of a corporate economy gave rise to new professions and white-collar occupations and made the middle class more diverse. And we know much about how gender, religion, cultural practices, and political activism [End Page 168] helped such people see themselves as “middle class”—and distinguish themselves from the majority of Americans. We know far less, however, about the middle class in the decades after World War II, the years when, thanks to the postwar economic boom and the expansion of education, the ranks of the middle class grew. And the whole process of how so many Americans, including people who, in other countries, would have proudly identified as “working class” came to see themselves as “middle class” remains quite mysterious. Thankfully, historians have begun to turn their attention to this subject, inspiring hope that we may eventually be able to explain what it meant to be middle class in the second half of the twentieth century and why being middle class remains so appealing today. The boldest recent attempt to address the subject is Lawrence Samuel’s lively and engaging “cultural history” of the middle class. Samuel’s book is quite ambitious for so slender a work. It purports to be both a history of the postwar middle class and a history of ideas about the middle class, drawn largely from journalistic sources and notable works of social criticism. It begins after World War II and examines the growth of the middle class amid postwar prosperity. Samuel then discusses the social, cultural, and political upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s and their impact on middle-class Americans in particular. For Samuel, this was an important period of transition, when a variety of factors contributed to a “fragmentation” of the middle class. The second half of the book covers the last three decades of the century, when it seemed that the middle class was in “crisis.” In these chapters Samuel assesses developments that encouraged this belief. The best sections of the book are those that cover periods when the state of the middle class was a major source of discussion: the 1950s and early 1960s, when commentators were struck by the impact of rising incomes and living standards and concerned about the spread of conformity; and the 1980s and especially the 1990s, when it became clear that political and economic trends were threatening the privileges and expectations middle-class Americans had long taken for granted...

Julia Pereguda. Geographical Features of Poverty and Formation of Middle Class in Ukraine. Analysis of social and geographic aspects of the study of the middle class in Ukraine and government policy on poverty reduction is very important at current stage of social development. Although the problem of poverty in Ukraine gained official recognition after the approval of the Poverty Reduction Strategy by the Decree of President of Ukraine dated 15 August 2001 р. # 637/2001, significant results could not be reached. The heterogeneity of poverty and problems of the middle class depends on a number of factors resulting from regional conditions. Poverty as a socio-economic phenomenon is directly related to both the level of economic development and inequality in access to tangible and intangible benefits. Like poverty, the middle class is present in every modern society, but the difference lies in the degree of its uniformity, stability, scale, and role in society. The main features of the middle class are: the level of material wealth and consumption, education and professional qualification status, economic and social motivation, method and way of life, the ability to self-organize. The study bases on statistical information by Ukrainian regions related to assessment of relative poverty and poverty depth. Strong middle class cannot form while poverty increases.