Rise Of Middle Class Research Articles

Enabling equitable energy access for Mozambique? Heterogeneous energy infrastructures in Maputo's growing urban periphery

This article concerns the relationship between uneven peri-urban growth and heterogeneous energy infrastructures in Metropolitan Maputo, Mozambique. Much research has documented how the diversity and overlap of different energy configurations define energy access in African cities. However, very little attention has been given to how urban growth dynamics shape heterogeneity and vice versa. A growing concern in African cities is highly uneven growth patterns, the rise of middle classes, and the selective forms of infrastructural connectivity linked to such spatial dynamics. However, urban growth is often approached through distinct settlements such as gated or enclave communities. The growth dynamics of energy access in more typical peri-urban neighbourhoods with mixed socio-economic characteristics remains an underexplored theme. Therefore, the critical question of this article is whether heterogeneous energy infrastructures contribute to uneven peri-urban development patterns, or does heterogeneity offer a more pragmatic solution to energy access in such spaces? This question is explored in three mixed-dynamics peri-urban neighbourhoods in Maputo. We find that infrastructural heterogeneity results from the increasingly commercial electrification procedures that privilege urban density and from private solar-home-system providers who privilege higher paying customers. Both phenomena respond to, and subsequently reinforce, divergent underlying social conditions and the divergent demand for energy services. However, we also find that heterogeneous energy configurations embody the considerable capacities and pragmatism of local communities. While we conclude that infrastructural heterogeneity contributes to uneven urban growth, we also suggest that policy-makers work more closely with local actors to distribute the benefits of energy access more equitably.

Household overspending on marriage: the scale of the problem and government reactions around the world

PurposeThe article offers an empirical investigation of the incidence and scale of household marriage overspending around the world, and the governments' reaction once the problem emerges.Design/methodology/approachThis study relies on regression analysis of open source data from legislation, mass media, and judiciary hearings for 141 countries. In the Phase 1 logistic regression of cross-country large-N data is used to identify country-incidence of marriage cost escalation. In the Phase 2 ordered logistic regression is used to uncover statistically significant factors that predict the probability of alternative government reactions in 87 countries which experience marriage cost escalation.FindingsIn a strong collectivist sociocultural environment, driven by informality, the rise of middle classes, combined with the decline of traditional hierarchies, and limited opportunities for economic mobility motivates households to enter emulative wedding spending, thus leading to overspending. Governments' reaction depends on available policy resources, and the economic scale of the problem.Research limitations/implicationsThe research findings suggest that rising living standards in the developing countries are more likely to escalate wedding costs, and consequently reinforce traditional values.Originality/valueAcademic literature links marriage-related overspending to armed insurgency, child marriage and decreasing state efficiency. Despite the problem's scope, existing research has not comprehensively addressed both its causes, and cross-country differences in government reactions to it. The article addresses both of the mentioned gaps, by offering a conceptual model of marriage cost escalation.

North by North

[Extract] Seven centuries of cartographic convention has placed north at the top of maps, and by logical extension at the top of the world. This convention has been closely aligned with another, known as the Mercator projection. Devised by the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1659, this system of map-making has been uncritically handed down through the centuries to the present time and continues to be the cartographic standard in many parts of the world. Mercator’s projection not only points northward but exaggerates northern landmasses at the expense of the south. For example, it magnifies Greenland to be approximately the same size as Africa, which is actually fourteen times larger. The Greenland example is one of many northern amplifications and conceits that belittle the south. The specific contrast with Africa was presented with deadpan humour and devastating effect in a 2012 episode of Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing. Cartographers for Social Equity lobby President Bartlet’s White House to withdraw all Mercator maps from US schools and replace them with Gall-Peters maps. The Gall-Peters projection represents with greater fidelity and accuracy the relative proportions of the world’s landmasses. The Cartographers for Social Equity fail in their representation but, coincidental or not, five years after the screening of The West Wing episode Gall-Peters maps began to be phased in at schools in two American states. North and south are cardinal directions and polar opposites that refer to exact locations at either end of the globe. Within ice-bound regions, the North Pole defines the Arctic, an old term derived from Latin and Greek to mean north. By contrast, its antithesis—the Antarctic—is a negative term that means opposite to north. It is defined by the South Pole. This linguistic preference suggests that north is the one while south is the other.

Along the Bolivian Highway: Social Mobility and Political Culture in a New Middle Class - by Shakow, Miriam

Shakow, Miriam (2014) Along the Bolivian Highway: Social Mobility and Political Culture in a New Middle Class, University of Pennsylvania Press (Philadelphia, PA), ix + 259 pp. $65.00 hbk. There is much discussion among development economists about the recent ‘rise of the middle classes’ in the Global South. Do they exist? What is the monetary threshold for belonging to the middle class? How vulnerable are such groups to falling back into poverty? Are the new middle classes the drive behind the ‘emerging economies’? Miriam Shakow asks a different set of questions, equally if not more important, concerning the political positions of these groups. Are new middle classes, as expected within theories of democracy, shaping democratic politics, and if so, how? And, in relation to the Bolivian case under scrutiny, how do upwardly mobile Bolivians challenge the construction of Bolivia as a country divided in a ‘poor and indigenous’ majority on the one hand, and the ‘rich and elitist’ minority on the other? How do these groups relate to and influence the leftist-indigenist government of Evo Morales? Shakow's book is timely and provides an anthro-political analysis of who these new middle classes are, what they aspire to, and how they relate to local, regional and national politics. The desire to overcome poverty and marginality did not emerge with Evo Morales or revolutionary politics. Bolivians worked hard to access higher education and professional jobs, and to set up profitable businesses. Shakow examines in depth the lives of upwardly mobile families in Sacaba, a town located between the provincial city of Cochabamba and the main coca growing area of Chapare. Here, farmers made money by growing coca leaves until the ‘war on drugs’ made this an unprofitable and precarious business. Nevertheless, the children of those coca growers benefitted from the coca boom of the 1980s and 1990s, and were able to aspire to a different life than the one their parents had led. Their relative prosperity and urban lifestyle do not fit in the notion of a Bolivia irreconcilably divided along class and ethnic lines. With changing socio-economic status comes a change in ethnic identity; as elsewhere in the Andes, class and race are strongly intertwined and to overcome marginality one has to overcome indigeneity. The middling Sacabans, Shakow shows, want to distinguish themselves from uneducated and ‘backward’ indigenous neighbours, even if their own background and upbringing is not very different. This creates tensions in identities and alliances: as Sacabans want to be recognised as ‘better’ than the indigenous, it becomes politically difficult to identify with a movement that proposes to ‘redistribute’ resources back to the indigenous majority. The desire for upward mobility and ‘superiority over their friends and neighbours’ is difficult to square with ‘the imperative of social equality’ (p. 10). So, Morales' political platform does not appeal greatly to these new middle classes. At the same time, there is an uncomfortable feeling among many middling Sacabans that the MAS, Morales' party, is where they belong. Shakow argues that the MAS has reified the idea of a postcolonial bifurcation of identity and citizenship, overlooking those important groups that do not fit the binary anymore. Shakow also looks at important issues such as clientelism, betrayal and envy as political strategies by examining the political aspirations of individual Sacabans and their relations with their own communities as well as with national politics. The author has some interesting things to say about these in Chapters 4–6; however, I found her observations about the intimate politics of identity even more interesting. In Chapter 2, Shakow looks at upward mobility and changing class and ethnic identity within families, and explores the contradictions and tensions that develop as a consequence of the desire to overcome marginality and questions of social equality. Racism towards those perceived as ‘more Indian’ is reproduced within families and among lovers and couples, creating an uncomfortable mix of upward mobility and downward kicking within the home. These intimate politics of race and class are very gendered, as women tend to be perceived as ‘more Indian’ than men (De la Cadena, 1991). The majority of the protagonists of Along the Bolivian Highway are women. This should have enabled an analysis that takes into account gender as an essential ingredient in the reproduction of inequality, both at home as well as in national politics. Unfortunately, Shakow does not consider gendered processes in her otherwise excellent book. This failure to take gender analysis into account aside, Along the Bolivian Highway is an important contribution to understanding contemporary politics in Bolivia, as well as the changes and tensions that emerge with the rise of new middle classes in developing countries.

Inequality, Sustainability and Middle Classes in a Polycentric World

__Abstract__ Poverty, inequality and sustainability continue to be the world’s major development challenges. One major trend in our increasingly multipolar world with more complex public–private–civic governance configurations is the rise of a significant number of middle-class citizens in low- and lower-middle income countries (Kharas and Gertz, 2010). These so-called ‘new’ middle classes in the Global South tend to be far less wealthy as compared with, for example, European middleclass consumers, but they have considerable purchasing power, and have become actors whose relevance for development cannot be ignored: these rising middle classes are both part of the problem and of the possible solutions for the world’s major developmental challenges. They are problematic because, if all ‘new’ middle-class consumers aspire to present Western consumption patterns, three planet earths would not be enough to sustain their consumptive demands. It is crucial that we identify possible avenues for more sustainable consumption patterns among the middle classes, old and new. And yet these new middle classes shed a light of hope for positive change. A vibrant civil society is also usually firmly rooted in the middle class. Activists, organizers and development scholars from the middle classes are engaged in attempts to reduce inequalities and to strengthen the responsibility and accountability mechanisms needed to galvanize developmental processes (Moore, 1966; Cheeseman, 2010). In this sense, the political, social, cultural and economic awareness and advocacy among middle classes can also be a part of a push toward less inequality and more sustainable production and consumption processes. The rise of middle classes around the Global South is part of major shifts in the distribution of economic and political power worldwide (Kaplinsky and Messner, 2008). Their growth weakens the traditional bilateral aid logic in which rich countries aid poor countries, and they help us to focus more on the dynamics of socioeconomic change within and between countries, and socioeconomic groups within societies.

What Happened to the Left Alternative?

During the 1970s, left movements were very strong across many parts of the world. Left-led anti-colonial struggles achieved major victories in Asia and Africa. But, in a basic sense, global political landscape underwent a fundamental transformation around 1980. Rise of middle classes and their increasing role in political discourse and tradition or religion-based resistance to West’s cultural dominance are the major political developments that are emerging as serious roadblocks to left politics in many parts of the world. In this paper, I explore the reasons for the differences in popular acceptance of left ideas between Latin America and other developing countries.

The rise of middle class in rural China

PurposeUsing official and household survey data, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the size of middle class in rural China, its trend and geographical distribution. Determinants or drivers of changes in the size of middle class are explored.Design/methodology/approachAn absolute definition of middle class, adjusted by rural purchasing power parity (PPP) and spatial price index, is employed to measure the size and geographic distribution of rural middle class in 1988, 1995, 2002, and 2007. Biprobit models and OLS models are estimated to investigate the determinants and consumption behavior of middle class in rural China.FindingsMajor findings include: in 2007, as many as 398 million rural residents or almost 54 percent of China's rural population belonged to the middle class; the size estimate of China's rural middle class based on income is broadly consistent with that based on assets; factors enhancing the probability of a household entering the middle class include human capital, political capital and non‐farming employment while industrialization, urbanization and development of TVEs also play significant roles; and the middle class not only consume more, but also consume more durables.Research limitations/implicationsA limitation of the paper is the use of 2002 data. However, more recent data are not available.Originality/valueThe size of the middle‐class is crucial for the stability of China, and the growth of the middle class in rural China is crucial for rebalancing the Chinese and global economy. Thus, the measurement results, the identified drivers, and the consumption behavior of rural middle class revealed in this paper can help shed light on nurturing middle class and adjusting development strategy for China to achieve a more sustainable and balanced economic growth.

Democracy and capitalist revolution

Democracy became the preferred and consolidated form of government only in the twentieth century. The new historical fact that led to the change of preference from aristocratic rule to democracy is the Capitalist Revolution, which changed the manner of appropriating the economic surplus from violence to the market. This is the first necessary condition for democracy. The disappearance of the fear of expropriation, the rise of middle classes, and the pressures of the poor are the complementary historical facts. After these four conditions were fulfilled, the elites ceased to fear that they would be expropriated if the poor won universal suffrage. The theory presented here does not predict transitions, since often countries under pressure from abroad turn democratic without the historical conditions being fully realized, but it predicts democratic consolidation, since no country that has completed its capitalist revolution falls bach into authoritarianism.

The Rise of Middle Class and Middle Management in Brazil

Brazil, during the past thirty years, has undergone extensive social and economic change, amounting to a Brazilian “Industrial Revolution”. It is always somewhat arbitrary to assign dates to broad historical events, but, if establishment of a starting point for the Industrial Revolution would aid in its understanding, the best date is probably 1930. In the economic field, it is true, World War One represented a first step; in the cultural field, the Week of Modern Art (1922 in Sao Paulo) was the first significant manifestation of a really Brazilian culture. But in both cultural and economic fields, and especially in the political field, the Revolution of 1930 (when Getúlio Vargas came to power), and the world depression beginning in 1929, are the most important events. The phase that many sociologists, economists, and historians call either the National Revolution or the Industrial Revolution, the stage that W. W. Rostow prefers to call the take-off period, began at that time in Brazil.