ABSTRACT
This volume delves into the study of the world’s emerging middle class. With essays on Europe, the United States, Africa, Latin America, and Asia, the book studies recent trends and developments in middle class evolution at the global, regional, national, and local levels. It reconsiders the conceptualization of the middle class, with a focus on the diversity of middle class formation in different regions and zones of world society. It also explores middle class lifestyles and everyday experiences, including experiences of social mobility, feelings of insecurity and anxiety, and even middle class engagement with social activism.
Drawing on extensive fieldwork and in-depth interviews, the book provides a sophisticated analysis of this new and rapidly expanding socioeconomic group and puts forth some provocative ideas for intellectual and policy debates. It will be of importance to students and researchers of sociology, economics, development studies, political studies, Latin American studies, and Asian Studies.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part 1|152 pages
Growth and decline of the middle class
chapter 5|20 pages
The poverty of the ‘middle classing’ of development
chapter 6|15 pages
Marriage, household composition, class status by nativity for women of color
chapter 7|15 pages
Urban decline, public sector contraction and the experiences of middle-income African Americans
part 2|104 pages
Locating the middle class
chapter 8|24 pages
The simplified assumptions of the global middle class narrative
chapter 10|18 pages
An absent asset-based black American middle class
chapter 12|27 pages
What has happened to the Middle Class?
part 3|102 pages
Lived middle class experience