Abstract
Abstract After the end of the political and economic cycle that gave rise to the phenomenon that became known as the Brazilian new middle class, in this article we argue that this reading was not limited to verifying the increase in income and consume power of thousands of families, but also framed it within a broader narrative that has hindered the sociological investigation of the phenomenon. Thus, our first objective is to develop, with the support of empirical data from the National Household Sample Survey (PNAD-IBGE), an alternative interpretation of the changes observed in Brazilian society in recent years. Our second objective is to reflect, with the help of data from the Survey on the Middle Class (CESOP-UNICAMP-2008), and also from qualitative research previously prepared by the authors, on the possible impacts of these changes on the expectations of individuals and, thus, on their perceptions and attitudes towards the enormous inequalities still present in the country.
Highlights
In the mid-2000s, a wide-ranging debate emerged concerning the changes being experienced by Brazilian society, in which different interpretations disputed with each other.1 In a context of economic growth and income distribution, the most tangible effects of which were the fall of unemployment, entry into the formal labour market, expanding access to credit and consumer goods, and, an increase in the income of a sizeable contingent of the population, the representation of these movements as the emergence of a new middle class seemed to have triumphed
Of the baggage of meanings associated with the term, we believe that the approach based on the idea of a new middle class hindered comprehension of the changes recently occurred in Brazilian society and their potential repercussions. We argue that these changes may have had important impacts on the behaviour of individuals – in terms of their expectations, perceptions and attitudes towards inequalities – but that the latter could only be adequately explored through an alternative approach to the thesis of the new middle class
From the viewpoint of the sociology of stratification and social inequalities, with which we identify, it is usual to investigate the impact of objective changes – occupational mobility, income rises, improvements in the standard of the consumption and so on – on the expectations of individuals and their perceptions and attitudes towards inequalities (Lipset & Bendix, 1991; Goldthorpe et al, 1971)
Summary
In the mid-2000s, a wide-ranging debate emerged concerning the changes being experienced by Brazilian society, in which different interpretations disputed with each other. In a context of economic growth and income distribution, the most tangible effects of which were the fall of unemployment, entry into the formal labour market, expanding access to credit and consumer goods, and, an increase in the income of a sizeable contingent of the population, the representation of these movements as the emergence of a new middle class seemed to have triumphed. In interpreting the changes experienced by Brazilian society at the beginning of the twentieth century as the emergence and/or expansion of a middle class, this perspective, explicitly or not, alluded to the aforementioned narrative of the virtuous middle class Such an approach was not limited to observing the economic rise of a broad contingent of families: it suggested that this phenomenon would be accompanied by changes to behaviours and attitudes.. The work is organized as follows: we present some data on the relationship between occupational classes, income and consume power in Brazil over recent years This information will help us to establish, in the ensuing section, an alternative interpretation to the thesis of the Brazilian new middle class, approaching the possible repercussions of the phenomenon in terms of individual expectations and, in related fashion, their perceptions and attitudes towards inequalities. We define the class situation of the families through the information provided on the key persons from the households – that is, the person responsible for the household unit, or considered as such by other members. Figure 2 shows the percentage of households in each of the income bands, according to the occupational category of the household heads, for the years from 2002 to 2014
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