Pathways into the Middle: Rites of Passage and Emerging Middle Classes in Namibia

This article aims to identify and characterise the Chinese urban middle class. We propose to improve the description of the middle class using an innovative approach combining an economic approach (based on income) and a sociological approach (based on education and occupation). The empirical investigations conducted as part of this research are based on the China Health and Nutrition Survey (2009). First, we define the middle income class as households with an annual per capita income between 10,000 yuan and the 95th percentile. On this basis, approximately 50% of urban households may be said to belong to the middle class. Second, we use information on employment and education to characterise the heterogeneity of the middle income class. Using clustering methods, we identify four groups: (i) the elderly and the inactive middle class, mainly composed of pensioners; (ii) the old middle class, composed of self-employed workers; (iii) the marginal middle class, composed of skilled and unskilled workers; and (iv) the new middle class, composed of highly educated wage earners in the public sector. We show that the different groups have distinctive features based on variables such as housing and household appliances and equipment.

“What’s in the middle”: Scratching beneath the surface of the middle class(es) in Brazil, Côte d’Ivoire, Turkey and Vietnam

Book Review From Miracle to Mirage: The Making and Unmaking of the Korean Middle Class, 1960–2015, by Myungji Yang. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2018. 204 pages. ISBN-10: 1501710737. $45.00 hardcover. The early 2000s ushered in an academic discussion surrounding South Korea’s social woes and concerns for the collapse of its middle class. It is, as the author epitomized, because of the importance of the middle class as a “carrier of economic and political modernization or as a coalitional actor for political transformations” (p. 8). The aftermath of the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s has delineated someone who can be still categorized as the middle class from another who does not belong to the middle class anymore. That is to say, chicken restaurants owners who invest their lump sum retirement pay would be straddling on the boundary between the two categories. A more pertinent observation is that of socioeconomically vulnerable people who struggle to survive by enduring longer working hours and severe working conditions—most of whom have probably been thrown from the race for upward mobility. Likewise, the un-making of the middle class has signaled turbulent circumstances across different classes. The collective anger for the collapse of the “middle class myth” followed by exacerbating inequality and economic polarization is expressed in the Korean Studies © 2019 by University of Hawai‘i Press. All rights reserved. 1 term “Hell Chosun,” which Yang Myungji discussed at the beginning of the concluding chapter. In From Miracle to Mirage: The Making and Unmaking of the Korean Middle Class, 1960–2015, Yang explains the political, social, and economic circumstances surrounding the emergence and development of the middle class in Korea, as well as the articulation by the middle class against transient circumstances threatening their social status. Chapters in this book are simple and each chapter carries a clear theme. Excluding the introduction and conclusion chapters, there are three chapters which are periodically aligned: the birth of the middle class as the ideal national goal during the 1960s and 1970s; the heydays, focusing on those who settled down in the Gangnam area during the 1980s and 1990s; and the unmaking process of the middle class myths from the 1990s to the present. As Yang mentioned, the notion of “class,” and by extension “middle class,” is a contestable term that is not neatly defined. Rather than delving into an elaborate definition of class in Korea, this book focuses more on the process and dynamics underlying the making and unmaking, via the educational system and investments on real-estate, particularly high-rise apartments in the Gangnam area. This book is additionally centered on the urban middle class in Korea, including three distinct groups: professionals and technical elites; salaried employees; as well as old middle class or petty bourgeoisie including self-employed small business owners, merchants, and shopkeepers. By complementing the definition of urban middle class based on the elaboration of socioeconomically positioned subjects, the book accords attention to the middle class as a contested notion and structural category, one that is not fixed but dependent on historical dynamics and structural forces. Addressing the dynamics of the middle class in the third chapter, their contradictory position in terms of “dubious” characteristics is described well: when their interests are well-represented by the society, they are a main group supporting the system; however, they can be the most threatening element of the society when their social and economic values are in conflict with the system. When the stable, mundane lifestyle of middle class is threatened, their frustration and collective actions can be articulated into social conflict followed by civil movement. Likewise, the strongest and most stable allies of current political regime can turn into their strongest opponents. In this sense, the most interesting chapter is the concluding chapter that highlights the issue of the dwindling middle class. 2 Korean Studies 2019 It briefly provides parallel situations in other countries that share similar issues regarding the crisis of the middle class, which have resulted in political chaos or economically unstable situations. By positioning Korea’s middle class issue into contemporaneity in the globalized world, the concluding chapter...

This thesis studies Thai bourgeois individuality as reflected in selected Thai biographical films released since 2006, an important year in Thai political history, when the military staged a coup, toppling former prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra. In particular, it examines how different forms of individuality in these films allow us to understand the political agenda or desire of many members of the urban middle class in the midst of on-going political crises and conflicts after 2006. Since the late 1990s, Thai film culture has seen a rise in the number of biographical films. However, in academic literature this film genre has remained under- explored and theorised, notably in the context of the socio-political transformation of Thailand in the same period of the emergence of these films. In this thesis, I attempt to provide both a theoretical understanding of the rise of biographical films and critical insight into how the production of these films can be viewed as integral to the conservative Thai middle-class culture of the present time. I approach these biographical films by using a framework that combines knowledge of the historical development of the Thai middle class—in which this thesis posits that this class has emerged and developed by allying itself with the power of the feudal establishment— and how this class‘s ideology is represented in biographical film narrative. Each chapter reveals how different aspects of Thai middle-class ideology are portrayed through forms of individuality represented in each film, particularly the form of individuality that is embodied in the characterisation of the protagonist. The central argument of this thesis is that the forms of individuality embedded in the protagonists of biographical films reflect the hybrid bourgeois-feudal cultural values of the Thai middle class. These hybrid cultural values of the Thai middle class serve to promote the power of the traditional establishment group as well as to maintain the middle class‘s coalition with the establishment. Most importantly, when looking at the political situation in the country after 2006 through these biographical films, the forms of bourgeois-feudal individuality and cultural values depicted in the films become a set of parameters that helps identify and specify different kinds of political agendas and desires of many members of Thailand‘s urban middle class in the context of the challenging political situation in this period. In particular, this thesis studies Thaksin‘s political group and the Red Shirt movement as forces which, since 2006, have challenged the coalition of the middle class and the establishment.

On the Updating and Reformulations, Added by Adam Smith and J M Keynes, to Aristotle's Universal, General Theory of Economics, Politics, Civics, and Institutions

Social class and body weight among Chinese urban adults: The role of the middle classes in the nutrition transition

Most human societies exhibit a distinct class structure, with an elite, middle classes, and a bottom class, whereas animals form simple dominance hierarchies in which individuals with higher fighting ability do not appear to form coalitions to "oppress" weaker individuals. Here, we extend our model of primate coalitions and find that a division into a bottom class and an upper class is inevitable whenever fitness-enhancing resources, such as food or real estate, are exploitable or tradable and the members of the bottom class cannot easily leave the group. The model predicts that the bottom class has a near flat, low payoff and always comprises at least half the society. The upper class may subdivide into one or more middle class(es), resulting in improved payoff for the topmost members (elite). The model predicts that the bottom class on its own is incapable of mounting effective counter-coalitions against the upper class, except when receiving support from dissatisfied members of the middle class(es). Such counter-coalitions can be prevented by keeping the payoff to the lowest-ranked members of the middle classes (through concessions) well above that of the bottom class. This simple model explains why classes are also absent in nomadic hunter-gatherers and predominate in (though are not limited to) societies that produce and store food. Its results also agree well with various other known features of societies with classes.

Trends in social inequality in physical inactivity among Danish adolescents 1991–2014

ABSTRACTIsraeli society in the first decades of statehood is thought of as a dichotomous one, with middle and upper class Ashkenazi Jews on one hand and on the other, lower class immigrants from Muslim countries. Though the emergence of a Mizrahi middle class is associated with the 1970s and 1980s, a deeper look into early-statehood Israel indicates that the ethnic/class dichotomy was already more nuanced in the 1950s. In fact, the social landscape of this period included a group of new Middle Eastern and North African immigrants of urban middle and upper classes, who managed to integrate into Israel's urban middle class. Most of them had come from Iraq. Scholarly discussion on this urban group presents methodological challenges, as documentation regarding it is scant and even rare. The current article concerns a particular sub-group of young middle-class immigrants from Iraq who published a journal documenting their world-view and activities. The article examines the characteristics of this group's integration process, its social and cultural perceptions, guiding aspirations, and dilemmas, placing particular emphasis on the identity and self-representation of these young people.

A Digital History of Anglophone Demography and Global Population Control, 1915–1984

This dissertation explores the ways in which black single mothers in the Washington, DC metropolitan area use material goods and consumption practices to inform their identities as members of the middle class. Black middle class women are challenging stereotypes surrounding single mother households, the idea of family, and class status in the United States, as more women overall are having children while single, delaying or deciding against marriage, and are entering the middle and upper-middle classes as a result of advanced education and career opportunities. Because of these demographic and sociocultural shifts, the romanticized “nuclear family” which consists of a married heterosexual couple and their children is becoming less authoritative as a symbol of middle class status. Instead, the middle class is represented through lifestyle options such as home ownership, neighborhood selection, fashion choices, education, and leisure activities. In the Washington, DC metro area, black women are asserting their single status while employing strategies to raise their children and excel professionally in order to maintain a middle class lifestyle. In this dissertation I examine black women, who are both single mothers and nonpoor, as an understudied, but constructive group in the DC metro area. Through ethnographic field research, I explored their experiences in the home, workplace, and greater community by employing a mixed methods approach including participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and focus groups. I demonstrate the ways material goods and experiences shape their complex identifies against and in support of various stereotypes. This research is unique in its focus on the black middle class from a new perspective and contributes to scholarly literatures on class and identity formation, black womanhood and motherhood, and material culture.

The long‐standing stability of the Park Chung Hee regime (1961–1979) in South Korea rests on the construction of political consent through appeasing the middle classes at the expense of the working class. In the 1960s, both working class and middle class were the beneficiaries of a rapid economic developmental project and hegemony was formed corresponding to the rapid expansion of the entire economy. In the 1970s when income disparity deepened and political repression grew severe, however, we witnessed divergent reactions to the state between middle and working class. While the working class began to challenge state policy, the urban middle class tacitly supported the Park regime and remained indifferent towards the opposition movement. Even when antiregime worker mobilization intensified, the urban middle class opted for the status quo, aligning itself with state ideology. Working‐class exclusion and middle‐class inclusion constituted the central mechanism for the generation of regime hegemony that blocked democratization.

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

Despite copious studies on the middle classes, there is no single, widely held definition of the middle class. Some scholars define the middle class in terms of the relation to the means of production, others in terms of relative incomes, and still others in terms of consumption patterns. A common working definition might include those with incomes in the middle third of the income distribution; who work as upper- or lower-level managers, professionals, or small-business owners; who graduated from a four-year college or university; and whose primary source of wealth is home ownership. The sociological study of the middle classes has a long and varied past and has been driven by both theoretical and empirical concerns. Theoretically, much attention has been given to conceptualizing the historical middle classes in relation to other social classes and also accounting for the emergence of the new middle class in the latter part of the 20th century. Neo-Weberian and neo-Marxist theories of class represent two influential perspectives on the middle class. Both perspectives emphasize the importance of market capacities in shaping life chances and how the middle classes differ from the working class and the upper class on this dimension. Neo-Marxist arguments differ primarily in their additional focus on the relationship to the means of production as a key dimension of the class structure. A third influential approach to studying class structure focuses on the role of tastes, consumption patterns, and cultural boundaries in defining class relations and identifying the middle classes. Empirically, the literature on the middle class addresses the structural forces shaping the emergence of the middle class in different national contexts and how the political, economic, and social trends of the time shape the experiences of the middle class. Since the late 20th century there has been considerable attention given to analyzing the “new middle class” and uncovering in what ways members of this class differ from other classes in terms of political orientations and activities. Other work has focused on how the changing economic landscape of the postindustrial economy has led to economic uncertainty for many members of the middle class, causing an increase in consumer debt, bankruptcies, and downward mobility. The notion of social reproduction and middle-class advantage (vis-à-vis the working class) is a theme running throughout work examining the education system and studies examining religion. Additional topics of research on the middle class include the intersectionality of gender, race, and ethnicity; the importance of geospatial dimensions of space and place; and cross-national comparative work and case studies of various subpopulations and nations.

What is the "American Dream"? This book's author argues that contrary to what many believe, it is not achieving the wealth necessary to enter the top one percent but rather becoming members of the great middle class by dint of hard work and self-discipline. Americans of all classes consider themselves to be "middle class." There are Americans who by any objective standard should be considered poor who would insist they are middle class, just as other Americans who should be considered wealthy also insist they are middle class. Thinking of yourself and being thought of by others as middle class is the "American Dream" for tens of millions of people. But an enduring problem of the American middle class is the worry that the "Dream" is coming apart—that forces are lurking in the shadows waiting to steal their progress and throw them back into "poverty." This thought-provoking reference explores a disparate multitude of issues associated with being middle class in America. It addresses a range of questions and subtopics, including the meaning of the term "middle class"; how middle class status is expressed by both the majority and the various minorities that make up the American mosaic; what economic pressures are bearing down on the middle class; and how economists and others attempt to make sense of the economic issues of the day. Readers will also better understand how political institutions and public policies are shaping the way the middle class views the world; how labor, housing, education, and crime-related issues have influenced the development and growth of the middle class; the norms of the middle class versus those of other classes in society; and the role of culture and media in shaping how members of the middle class view themselves—and how they are viewed by others. This two-volume set provides a comprehensive look at the American middle class that supports student research in economics, social studies, cultural studies, and political history. The content supports teachers in their development of lesson plans and assignments that directly align with the Common Core State Standards and the recommendations of the National Curriculum Standards for Social Studies (NCSS) with respect to all ten NCSS themes.