ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the historical origins of the middle classes in India and interweave them with Pierre Bourdieu’s concept. It examines the gendered aspects of middle-classness in India, and draws on the experiences of a mother and daughter who have lived through the changes since 1991. The chapter focuses on their trajectories of education, marriage, careers and motherhood in an increasingly globalised context. Using Bourdieu’s concepts of capital it describes the roles these two women play in acquiring and reinforcing the economic, social, cultural and symbolic capitals they view as necessary to be middle class and the strategies they employ to transmit these capitals to their children, particularly in the educational field. The chapter deals with extensive research in the United Kingdom looking at the educational strategies which middle-class parents, particularly mothers, employ in order to ensure social reproduction and intergenerational mobility.
