ABSTRACT
In this book I have sought to portray a middle-class cultural life in Kochi using, as a departing point, the recent work of Mark Liechty (2003) amongst the middle classes in Kathmandu, as well as the work of Pier Bourdieu (Bourdieu 1984). Like them, I think of class in terms of a ‘practice’ or ‘project’, which emphasises a processual conception of class – a perpetual work-in-progress that is fluid and contested – rather than a passive and objectifying definition. Therefore, I have presented parents, students and educational institutions joined together through a range of class practices and discourses. Liechty (2003: 265) rightly concludes that if class is not an objective category, then we ought to move past the immobilising question ‘What is class?’ to the active question ‘What does class as cultural practice do?’. Ultimately, he argues that what class practice in Kathmandu does is carve out a new cultural domain that he calls the middle-class ‘cultural space’, in the imagination of urban middle-class dwellers as well as imbuing ‘real’, physical space with class meaning.
