Making Sense of Latin America’s Middle Classes

Abstract

What does it mean to be middle class in Latin America? How is the Latin American middle class changing? What are the implications of these changes for Latin American development? The contributions to this volume, taken together, attempt to answer these questions and to make sense of the emerging middle classes in Latin America. This initial chapter motivates recent interest in the Latin American middle class by situating the topic in three narratives about the region’s development experience in recent years, having to do with development success (in comparison to past decades, including the so-called ‘Lost Decade’ that stretched to almost twenty years in some countries), self-sustaining economic growth and a reduction of dependence on the US and European markets and the social critique formulated by the Brazilian demonstrations of 2013–14; each of these stories has an important middle-class dimension. The chapter then provides an overview for understanding the numerous ways the middle class has been defined and measured in recent years, arguing that the various definitions serve an array of explanatory purposes. The final section surveys the answers provided by the contributors to this volume to the research questions raised here.