The radicalisation of middle-class activism: a theoretical overview

Abstract

This chapter sums up the public and academic debate on the recent activism of the middle class and on the role played by the unequal distribution of wealth and income on living standards or, alternatively, by the profound cultural changes in social values in many Western European nations. This research has produced contrasting evidence for both economic and cultural causes and has generated an intense academic and public debate. Much of the research highlights single deprivations or conflicts appearing within the process of the decline of the middle class, failing to recognise both the critical role played by the context in which the economic and cultural dynamics develop and the agency of social actors that mediates the effects of economic and cultural dynamics We need to understand the context in which the dynamics of deprivation and cultural changes happen and which other causal relationships exist and could interfere with the causal power of these dynamics. These interactions offer a more productive understanding of the recent activism of the middle class and its shifting relations with the welfare state.