In the summer of 2016, the University of Dallas and the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México organized a conference to discuss the topic of the middle class and its continued decline—recognizing that, despite some historical, political and cultural differences, healthy democracies throughout the hemisphere depend upon a strong and prosperous middle class. This volume brings together contributions by nine scholars from both institutions. The chapters reflect diverse disciplinary perspectives that are historical, political, economic, anthropological, and philosophical. (...) Despite this diversity, the volume possesses a conceptual unity that stems from its foundation in Aristotle’s approach to the middle class. On this basis, the topic is given a rigorous study that is both theoretical and data-driven. The chapters include treatments of Aristotle, Montesquieu, Adam Smith and Sir James Steuart, Catholic social teaching, the problem of inequality in the US, the definition and measurement of the middle class in Mexico, as well as its values and political attitudes, the rise of middle-class politics in early-twentieth-century Latin America, and a comparative analysis of healthcare for the middle class in North America. (shrink)

In this volume, a well-known psychoanalyst, dance therapist, and educational consultant chronicles her clinical work with deeply troubled children who fall between the cracks of our diagnostic and educational systems. These children, who frequently turn out to have been sexually or punitively abused, have no real emotional home despite the fact that they live in materially comfortable circumstances. In spite of their apparent brightness and precocity, they do not thrive in the classroom, where their disruptive behavior, tendency to act out, (...) and fragmented learning bring them to the attention of teachers, counselors, and school psychologists. Standard diagnoses do not explain their plight; such children are neither retarded nor learning disabled nor neurotic. Through poignant case studies, Siegel reviews the developmental circumstances that bring these middle-class waifs to a critical impasse with both their parents and the educational establishment. Time and again she discovers that the children's expectable developmental course has been derailed by their accommodation to parental abuse and deformed parental expectations. Psychodynamic treatment invariably uncovers the maladaptive solutions that fueled the children's behavioral and learning disturbances. This volume speaks to a broad clinical and non-clinical readership: psychoanalytic clinicians; psychologists; counselors; social workers; art, dance, and music therapists; special education teachers; child therapists; and child care workers. They will all join in admiration of Siegel's treatment approach which focuses on what is healthy in deeply traumatized children and, in so doing, helps debunk the myth of the untreatable child. (shrink)

In the contemporary context of increasing inequality and various forms of segregation, this volume analyzes the transition to neoliberal politics in Santiago de Chile. Using an innovative methodological approach that combines georeferenced data and multi-stage cluster analysis, Méndez and Gayo study the old and new mechanisms of social reproduction among the upper middle class. In so doing, they not only capture the interconnections between macro- and microsocial dimensions such as urban dynamics, schooling demands, cultural repertoires and socio-spatial trajectories, (...) but also offer a detailed account of elite formation, intergenerational accumulation, and economic, cultural, and social inheritance dynamics. (shrink)

In the United States, the crisis broke out in 2008 launched a public debate on the decline of the middle class with peculiar historical references: from the Great Depression and the New Deal to the globalization of the Nineties, through the fractures imposed by the social movements of the Sixties and the neo-liberal turn of the Eighties. In the light of a debate in which the middle class emerges as an indisputable keyword of the American political (...) cultures, the essay points out the historical origin of the fetish of middle class by showing the role that US social sciences have had in the making of the middle class as an ideological notion at the very foundation of the American century. Released by its fetish, middle class emerges as a historical category that allows to trace the formation of the liberal order and its transition to the neoliberal order, to point to the crisis and transformation of capitalism and the American state, to identify the frontier beyond which their historical legitimacy is missing. (shrink)

"You have to come to my wedding," Kavita told me, turning to face me where I sat next to her on the couch. "You can come with the other people from the street. You will get everything you need for your *research* there." "I will come, I will come!" I replied enthusiastically. I had only met Kavita and her two younger sisters, Arthi and Deepti (see Figure 2.1), mere minutes before this invitation was extended. I had initially come to Pulan (...) that day in October 2012 to meet another woman, Heena, whose family rents a room on the third story of Kavita's family's home. Heena and I had been sitting in the furniture refurbishing store she operates with her husband on the main street of Pulan when Deepti, Kavita's youngest sister, passed by. Heena introduced us and told me to go with Deepti to meet her family. When we reached the family's three-story house-the largest in the gali-Deepti led me past the empty rooms on the ground floor, which I would eventually begin renting, to the second-story living room. There, we found Kavita and Arthi organizing clothing and jewelry they had purchased earlier in the day for the upcoming wedding festivities. Kavita made room for me to sit next to her on the couch and began asking me about myself. I immediately warmed to her because of her open, friendly smile and sharp, staccato Hindi, which I delighted in being able to understand. I explained that I had come to India to study how women's lives are different in rural and urban areas, and Kavita assured me that she and her family could help. She noted that her parents had come to Udaipur from Ram Nagar, a large village thirty-five kilometers north of the city, and that the family would be returning for her and her older brother Krishna's weddings the following month. Their weddings would be held five days apart to help reduce the difficulties of family members traveling from outside Udaipur. Prompted by the description of my research, Kavita commented on differences that she recognized between the village and the city. The biggest difference, she suggested, was the experience of caste, namely that in the village, people from different jatis live separately, whereas in the city, people are "mixed." As I would come to learn when visiting Ram Nagar for various functions, there is a fair amount of caste and religious diversity in the village. Although spatial and ritual segregation was rather strictly maintained during religious observances, it is likely more flexible in everyday life. The segregation during ritual functions-the occasions for which Kavita also traveled to the village-likely informed her sense of a lack of "mixing" in the village as. The majority of residents in the area of Ram Nagar where the family maintains a home were also from the Mali (lit: gardener) jati, although Mali was not a majority jati in Pulan. (shrink)

Some egalitarians argue against public services that are free for all, on the grounds that free access appears to primarily benefit the middle classes. I advocate, instead, the inclusion of the middle classes in public services, arguing that only truly universal intake of public services prevents the inegalitarian effects of economic segregation. Such universal participation in public services is achieved, partly, through subsidies for, and regulation of, privately produced services.

The expansion and transformation of Asian economies is producing class structures, roles and identities that could not easily be predicted from other times and places. The industrialisation of the countryside, in particular, generates new, rural middle classes which straddle the worlds of agriculture and industry in complex ways. Their class position is improvised on the basis of numerous influences and opportunities, and is in constant evolution. Enormous though its total population is, meanwhile, the rural middle (...) class='Hi'>class remains invisible to most scholars and policymakers. Contested Capital is the first major work to shed light on an emerging transnational class comprised of many hundreds of millions of people. In India, the 'middle class' has become one of the key categories of economic analysis and developmental forecasting. The discussion suffers from one major oversight: it assumes that the middle class resides uniquely in the cities. As this book demonstrates, however, more than a third of India's middle class is rural, and 17 per cent of rural households belong to the middle class. The book brings this vast and dynamic population into view, so confronting some of the most crucial neglected questions of the contemporary global economy. (shrink)

In what directions is the Australian `new' middle class developing as we move towards the `Asia-Pacific century'? This paper reviews the basic structural features of the group during most of the 20th century, and suggests that a number of the arrangements which had delivered high status, material privileges and security to the group are becoming increasingly problematic. It examines evidence of the growing importance of Asian opportunities to the Australian middle class, and indications of responses to (...) these. Interpreted in the context of contemporary accounts of transformations in identity formation processes, this evidence may signal the emergence of a significant new stratum within the Australian middle class. The paper concludes with some speculations about the significance of such a development. (shrink)

This discussion focuses on two important trends in American childbirth that have emerged in the past 30 years, the demand for a perfect baby and the desire for a perfect birth. These two trends are particularly important in the subgroup of middle-class women who have decided on delayed childbearing. Tremendous technological innovations, such as ultra-sound, prenatal genetic analysis, and fetal monitoring, have promoted the perception that physicians can control the prenatal environment and predict the pregnancy outcome. This expectation (...) may lead to bitterness and anger in the event of an adverse pregnancy outcome. In contrast, women and their families have also come to desire more control over the birth experience. If the parents’ birth plan is not achieved and their expectations not fulfilled, many parents feel they have not performed well. When the physician acts as a guide in the birth process, parents and physicians together may transcend the conflict to achieve a more satisfactory birth experience. (shrink)

This paper critiques what it sees as a tendency on the part of certain social researchers to engage in moralistic critiques of middle-class parents, especially in relation to the choices and actions of such parents within educational quasi-markets. It proceeds to a linked critique of the influence within education of certain aspects of the work of Pierre Bourdieu, with particular reference to the concepts of symbolic violence and the depiction of cultural meanings as arbitrary. It is argued that (...) both these developments involve unhelpful and unjustified forms of reductionism that could have the effect of alienating middle-class support for a range of broadly progressive political endeavours within and beyond education. (shrink)

The growing Chinese middle class and their accumulation of wealth and economic capital have seen an increasing number of Chinese students pursuing their education in the West. Due to this growing number, motivations behind their decision to study abroad warrant scholarly treatment. This article discusses the motives of Chinese middle-class families and their children in seeking studying abroad. The paper reports on a recent study of 166 students on American campuses from 2017 to 2018. It uses (...) Bourdieusian concepts of capital, habitus, and the idea of social mobility and social reproduction, to understand Chinese middle-class families’ strategic decisions around studying overseas in relation to employability, labour market competitiveness, and family support. Studying abroad, therefore, is construed by Chinese middle class families as a way of pursuing and preserving their social status and social mobility. (shrink)

Based on data collected from a representative-sample survey conducted in five Chinese cities (Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Chengdu, and Hangzhou) in the middle of 2008, this study examines the behavioral orientations of Chinese middle class toward the local elections which are held in urban areas, and the attitudinal orientations of Chinese middle class toward the current regime. The results indicate that there is a strong division within the group of the middle class, especially along (...) the lines of the relationship with the state. Therefore, this study suggests that the Chinese middle class is a class without a shared class identity. (shrink)

This essay reviews Deirdre McCloskey’s trilogy in political economy: Bourgeois Virtues, Bourgeois Dignity, and Bourgeois Equality. In this trilogy McCloskey seeks to reestablish the ethical, historical, and political legitimacy of modern capitalism. Success of the project is offset by misapprehension of normativity and thus of how human economy is ethical.

An enduring question in the cultural study of psychological experience concerns how emotion may play a role in shaping moral aspects of children’s lives as they are mentored into socially preferred ways of understanding and responding to the world at hand. This article brings together approaches from psychological and linguistic anthropology to explore how cultural schemas of normativity are communicated, embodied, and enacted as children participate in day-to-day family activities and routines. Illustrative examples emanate from a videotaped corpus of naturalistic (...) interactional data that document the daily lives of 32 ethnically diverse U.S. middle-class families who reside in the Los Angeles, California metropolitan region. The article employs discourse and narrative analysis to examine how children are apprenticed into perceiving, appraising, and reacting to the emotions of self and others as culturally shaped indicators for proper comportment. Data analysis emphasizes how implicit components of caregivers’ interactions with children (i.e., gesture, gaze, facial expression) intertwine with explicit, verbal communication to constitute intricately layered affective messages that shape the evaluative frames through which children interpret, display, and respond to emotions. The article identifies two culturally salient childrearing practices, “pep talks” and “time outs,” that apprentice children into moral accountable relationships with others by encouraging them to manage their emotions in culturally preferred ways. Study findings suggest that parental communications conveying praise and approval—or conversely indexing disapproval—towards children are emotionally resonant motivational practices in this cultural milieu as children are mentored into culturally meaningful emotional management techniques. The article highlights how children actively employ semiotic socio-communicative resources and it closely traces their sense-making processes in tandem with their discursive contributions to the moment-by-moment interaction. It argues that emotion, morality, and interpersonal relations are critical in shaping children’s acquisition of consensually validated ways of perceiving, feeling, and responding to the phenomena they encounter in their day-to-day lives. This perspective aims towards contextualized understandings that render plausible connections between local contexts of everyday action and broader macro-level discourses and master narratives, such as those associated with a neo-liberal emphasis on cultivating citizens who learn to regulate their emotions on behalf of self and others. (shrink)

The author of handbooks that reflected the Victorian emphasis on bettering one's prospects, Charles Eyre Pascoe addressed the topic of female education in this work of 1879, at a time when the Cambridge colleges of Girton and Newnham were in their infancy. 'Chiefly designed for the use of persons of the upper middle class', the guide aims to assist parents in making informed choices about their daughters' education. The coverage extends from kindergarten through to university, before focusing on (...) career options for women in the late nineteenth century, in fields such as teaching, the arts and medicine. Throughout, Pascoe's recommendations are based on consideration of the breadth of the curriculum, the qualifications of the teaching staff and the results achieved in examinations. For higher education, details of entrance examinations are provided, together with information on the subjects and lectures that were open to women at that time. (shrink)

Informed by s socio-historical theory, this paper will report on a study that sought to document the literacy and numeracy outcomes for children living in low socio-economic circumstances in a region south-east of Melbourne, Australia. The research focused on children in preschool and child care centres in the year prior to beginning school, and was designed to map literacy and numeracy experiences of children in the home and in the early childhood centre. In this paper an analysis of the cultural (...) tools that families were intentionally developing in the context of their homes and communities is featured. A socio-historical analysis of the data revealed children’s active engagement in the funds of knowledge (Moll and Greenberg 1990, Moll, 1990, and Moll, 2000) available within the community, the situated nature of learning (Lave and Wenger, 1991) within their communities, and the challenge for families transcending the constraints of ‘everyday learning’ to engage with ‘schooled learning’ (Hedegaard, 1998). The study also revealed the institutional barriers to learning the landscape of schooling (Greeno, 1991) and the deficit positioning evident for children and their families within the official script of middle class early childhood discourse (Fleer, 2003). (shrink)

This article seeks to contribute to the history of the idea of 'middle class', an idea that was fundamental to Aristotle's philosophy but disappeared from the repertoire of political thinking for centuries, re-emerging shortly before the French Revolution to be developed by Diderot and other French liberals. The modern notion of 'middle class' is compared with that of Aristotle, and the similarities between the two contexts of emergence -- the crisis of Ancient Greek democracy and that (...) of the French Ancien Régime -- are explored to cast new light on the meaning and political function of that idea, and on the metaphorical operations it performs. (shrink)

In recent decades, urban agriculture has drawn practitioners seeking ways to increase both environmental sustainability and social equity in their cities. The practice has also drawn criticism for the ways it reproduces inequalities based on differences of class and race. In this paper, I argue contestations around urban agriculture are part of ongoing yet shifting processes of class formation intersecting with racial differentiation, in particular the emergence of green middle-class identity. Drawing on fourteen months of ethnographic (...) fieldwork in a small city in Michigan, USA, I examine urban agriculture as a historic spatial and aesthetic practice, drawing on examples of chicken-keeping, permaculture-style gardening, and concerns with neatness and blight. By positioning urban agriculture within historical narratives of landscape aesthetics and land use policy, I demonstrate how this practice becomes bound up in the ongoing production of class distinctions and inequalities. Throughout, I draw attention to how processes of class formation unfold in ways that diverge from, or are in excess of, local gardeners’ and agriculturalists’ intentions. In conclusion, I gesture to the ways the instability and dynamism of class formation via urban agriculture presents opportunities for addressing the reproduction of race- and class-based inequalities and for nurturing more equitable and sustainable forms of urban agriculture practice. (shrink)

The Middle Class—An Untidy Prominence: Verity Burgmann and Jenny Lee, A People's History of Australia Since 1788 Four Volumes: A Most Valuable Acquisition ; Making a Life ; Constructing a Culture ; Staining the Wattle.

How do we theorize the Chinese state, a state both transforming itself rapidly through economic rationalism and yet standing firmly through governmental authoritarianism? Where and how is the figure of the middle class situated in this Chinese state? How does a critical understanding of the Chinese situation offer insights into problems of risks associated with the middle class in the current global economic crisis/recession? To address these questions, I look at both the politics of the Chinese (...) state and its transformative relations to the people, the subject of the Chinese nation. More specifically, I examine the evolving relationship between the…. (shrink)

When a professor from Middle Europe teaches Computer Ethics in the Middle East using a textbook from the US, cultural differences become apparent. A main challenge lies in avoiding cultural imperialism during teaching. In order to meet this challenge, personal portfolios have been used for course work. The course design as well as portfolio tasks are presented and experiences are discussed. Based on our experiences we recommend applying this approach to equally overcome effects of group dynamics in similar (...) courses as well as to bridge the generational gap that normally exists between students and professors. (shrink)

Beauty is constantly lived and incorporated as a meaningful social category in Brazil and intersects with racialised and gendered ways of belonging to the Brazilian nation. In this article, I deploy ethnographic material to show how middle-class women self-identifying as black embody and experience beauty and how, through practices and discourses centred on physical appearance, they both reinforce and challenge broader social and racial inequalities in Brazil.