New subjectivities: Aspiration, prosperity and the new middle class

James, Deborah

doi:10.1080/00020184.2018.1540516

Cited by 20 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…For instance, Nash (1993) in her work on mine workers in Latin America, shows how class intersects with aspects of racial inequality. In turn, James (2019) finds that the economic ⁷ While some (Osella and Osella 2000) do look at the nature of change in occupations, mobility is seen mostly through other categories, such as caste.…”

Section: Labour and Classmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ethnography and Social Mobility

Vaid¹

2021

Social Mobility in Developing Countries

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The ethnographic approach has much to contribute to our understanding of social mobility. This chapter provides a discussion on ethnography as a method and approach to writing and description, and reviews some ways in which themes related to social mobility and inequality in the developing world have been explored ethnographically. It discusses the themes that these studies cover in terms of two frames: the social construction of mobility and the fields within which mobility plays out. Social mobility is explored in relation to themes such as the family, labour, class, caste, race, gender, migration, and inequality. These are considered in relation to the value of ethnography in underscoring everyday lived experiences of individuals and collectives.

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Section: Labour and Classmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ethnography and Social Mobility

Vaid¹

2021

Social Mobility in Developing Countries

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“…This also requires attending to the ‘conditions of possibility’ (Liechty 2012, cited in Spronk, this issue) that enable some to do better than others at corralling assets, wealth and privilege. Understanding the lived experiences of the middle classes, and how they are shaped by and related to other social groups and institutions (Southall 2018; James 2019) – while remaining attentive to what is driving the emergence of Africa's middle class (Carrier 2015; Noret 2019) – is necessary if we are to better understand what it means to be middle-class, and the meaning of the middle class in contemporary Africa. As the articles here demonstrate, ethnography, particularly when historically embedded or carried out longitudinally, can provide important insights into such questions.…”

Section: Africa's Middle Classesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The lived experiences of the African middle classes Introduction

Mercer¹,

Lemanski²

2020

Africa

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What are the experiences of the African middle classes, and what do their experiences tell us about social change on the continent? While there have been ample attempts to demarcate the parameters of this social group, the necessary work of tracing the social life and social relations of the middle classes is just beginning. The articles in this special issue provide compelling accounts of the ways in which the middle classes are as much made through their social relations and social practices as they are (if indeed they are) identifiable through aggregate snapshots of income, consumption habits and voting behaviours. Rachel Spronk (2018: 316) has argued that ‘the middle class is not a clear object in the sense of an existing group that can be clearly delineated; rather, it is a classification-in-the-making’. We agree, and our aim in bringing these contributions together in this special issue is to develop our understanding of how this process is emerging in different contexts across Africa. In her opening contribution, Carola Lentz suggests that we need more research on ‘the social dynamics of “doing being middle-class”’, or what we term here ‘middle-classness’, which attends to this ‘classification-in-the-making’ through urban–rural changes over intergenerational life courses, multi-class households, kinship and social relations. Such an agenda has recently been opened up by two edited volumes on the African middle classes (Melber 2016; Kroeker et al. 2018). We further develop this agenda here through a series of empirically rich articles by scholars in African studies, anthropology, literature and sociology that explicitly address the question of the lived experiences of the middle classes. Echoing Spronk's unease with taking ‘the middle class’ as an already constituted social group, what emerges across the articles is rather the unstable, tenuous and context-specific nature of middle-class prosperity in contemporary Africa. Social positions shift – or are questioned – as one moves from the suburb to the township (Ndlovu on South Africa) or into state-subsidized high-rise apartments (Gastrow on Angola). Stability gives way over time to precarity (Southall on Zimbabwe). Wealth is not tied to the individual but circulates more widely through social relations. Should one invest in the nuclear or the extended family (Hull on South Africa; Spronk on Ghana)? In a house or a car (Durham on Botswana)? And why does it matter – for the individual, the household, the family, the city, the nation and the continent? To grasp what it means to be middle-class in Africa today necessarily requires an understanding of the historical, social and spatial embeddedness of lived experiences at multiple scales.

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“…For instance, June Nash, a proponent of Marxist anthropology, in her work on mine workers in Latin America, shows how class intersects with aspects of racial inequality (Nash 1993). In turn, James (2019) finds that the economic approach in locating and understanding the new middle class in Kenya and South Africa is limiting, and argues that attention should also be paid to other facets, such as religion, and the role they play in constructing a class identity.…”

Section: Labour and Classmentioning

confidence: 99%