Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-mp689 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T12:37:41.814Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Doing being middle-class in the global South: comparative perspectives and conceptual challenges

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2020

Carola Lentz
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Like many key terms in history and the social sciences, ‘middle class’ is at once a category ‘of social and political analysis’ and a category ‘of social and political practice’, in Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper's terms – two aspects that were, and continue to be, entangled in complex ways. Since the end of the eighteenth century, the term ‘middle class’, or the ‘middling sorts’, has been a catchword in political discourse, and it became one long before scholars defined it in any systematic fashion. Once it became a more or less well-established conceptual tool of research, however, it began to take on an academic life of its own, with scholars also using it to describe people who did not invoke this category for their own self-description. But scholarly terms could – and indeed did – also feed back into folk understandings of social stratification. In particular, the recent global popularity of the term ‘middle class’ seems to be at least in part a result of the appropriation of academic categories by policymakers. This article contributes to the discussion on African middle classes by tracing the genealogy of theoretical perspectives on class and by outlining some findings from studies of the history of European and American middle classes as well as recent research on middle classes in the global South. I discuss both the history of scholarly debates on the middle classes and what empirical studies tell us about people's contested self-categorizations, and how their understandings and practices of being middle-class have changed over time. The article argues that future research on the dynamics of African social stratification has much to gain from a regional and historical comparative perspective.

Résumé

Résumé

Comme beaucoup de termes clés de l'histoire et des sciences sociales, « classe moyenne » est à la fois une catégorie « d'analyse sociale et politique » et une catégorie « de pratique sociale et politique », selon Rogers Brubaker et Frederick Cooper; deux aspects qui s'imbriquaient de manières complexes, et continuent de le faire. Depuis la fin du dix-huitième siècle, le terme « middle class » ou « middling sorts » utilisé pour désigner la classe moyenne est un mot d'ordre du discours politique, et il en est devenu un bien avant que les universitaires le définissent de façon systématique. Mais dès lors qu'il est devenu un outil de recherche conceptuel plus ou moins bien établi, il a commencé à s'animer d'une vie académique, avec des universitaires l'utilisant également pour décrire des personnes qui n'invoquaient pas cette catégorie pour se décrire elles-mêmes. Mais les termes savants pouvaient, et ce fut le cas d'ailleurs, se retrouver également dans les interprétations populaires de stratification sociale. En particulier, la popularité mondiale récente du terme « classe moyenne » semble résulter, du moins en partie, de l'appropriation des catégories académiques par les décideurs politiques. Cet article contribue à la discussion sur les classes moyennes africaines en étudiant la généalogie des perspectives théoriques en matière de classe et en décrivant des résultats d’études de l'histoire des classes moyennes européennes et américaines, ainsi que des études récentes sur les classes moyennes du Sud. L'auteur traite à la fois de l'histoire des débats savants sur les classes moyennes et de ce que nous disent les études empiriques de l'auto-catégorisation contestée des individus, ainsi que de l’évolution au fil du temps de leur interprétation et de leur pratique de ce qu'est être de classe moyenne. L'article soutient que la recherche future sur les dynamiques de la stratification sociale africaine a beaucoup à gagner d'une perspective comparative au niveau régional et historique.

Type
The lived experiences of the African middle classes
Information
Africa , Volume 90 , Issue 3 , May 2020 , pp. 439 - 469
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abelmann, N. (2003) The Melodrama of Mobility: women, talk, and class in contemporary South Korea. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alber, E. (2014) Soziale Elternschaft im Wandel. Kindheit, Verwandtschaft und Zugehörigkeit in Westafrika. Berlin: Reimer.Google Scholar
Archer, M. and Blau, J. R. (1993) ‘Class formation in nineteenth-century America: the case of the middle class’, Annual Review of Sociology 19: 17–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Banerjee, A. V. and Duflo, E. (2008) ‘What is middle class about the middle classes around the world?’, Journal of Economic Perspectives 22 (2): 3–28.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barry, J. (1994) ‘Review article: the making of the middle class?’, Past and Present 145 (1): 194–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Behrends, A. (2002) Drahtseilakte. Frauen aus Nordghana zwischen Bildung, Beruf und gesellschaftlichen Konventionen. Frankfurt am Main: Brandes & Apsel.Google Scholar
Behrends, A. and Lentz, C. (2012) ‘Education, careers, and home ties: the ethnography of an emerging middle class from Northern Ghana’, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 137: 139–64.Google Scholar
Berry, S. S. (1985) Fathers Work for their Sons: accumulation, mobility and class formation in an extended Yoruba community. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bertram, G. (1988) ‘“Middle-class capture”: a brief survey’. Available at <http://www.geoffbertram.com/fileadmin/Middle%20class%20capture.pdf>, accessed 19 June 2015.,+accessed+19+June+2015.>Google Scholar
Bledstein, B. J. (2001) ‘Introduction: storytellers to the middle class’ in Bledstein, B. J. and Johnston, R. D. (eds), The Middling Sorts: explorations in the history of the American middle class. New York NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bossuroy, T. and Cogneau, D. (2008) ‘Social mobility and colonial legacy in five African countries’. Working Paper 10. Paris: DIAL (Développement, Institutions et Analyses de Long Terme).Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P. (1984) ‘Espace social et genèse des “classes”’, Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 52–3: 3–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brosius, C. (2010) India's Middle Class: new forms of urban leisure, consumption and prosperity. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Brubaker, R. (2004) Ethnicity without Groups. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Brubaker, R. and Cooper, F. (2000) ‘Beyond “identity”’, Theory and Society 29: 1–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Budde, G. (2009) Blütezeit des Bürgertums. Bürgerlichkeit im 19. Jahrhundert. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.Google Scholar
Carrier, J. G. (2015) ‘The concept of class’ in Carrier, J. G. and Kalb, D. (eds), Anthropologies of Class: power, practice, and inequality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carrier, J. G. and Kalb, D. (eds) (2015) Anthropologies of Class: power, practice, and inequality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Castoriadis, C. (1987) The Imaginary Institution of Society. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Copans, J. (1985) ‘The Marxist conception of class: political and theoretical elaboration in the African and Africanist context’, Review of African Political Economy 32: 25–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crompton, R. and Scott, J. (2005) ‘Class analysis: beyond the cultural turn’ in Devine, F., Savage, M., Scott, J. and Crompton, R. (eds), Rethinking Class: culture, identities and lifestyle. New York NY: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Darbon, D. and Toulabor, C. (2011) ‘Quelle(s) classe(s) moyenne(s) en Afrique? Une révue de littérature’. Document de Travail 118. Paris: Agence Française de Développement.Google Scholar
Davidoff, L. and Hall, C. (1987) Family Fortunes: men and women of the English middle class, 1780–1850. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Devine, F. (2005) ‘Middle-class identities in the United States’ in Devine, F., Savage, M., Scott, J. and Crompton, R. (eds), Rethinking Class: culture, identities and lifestyle. New York NY: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Devine, F. and Savage, M. (2005) ‘The cultural turn, sociology and class analysis’ in Devine, F., Savage, M., Scott, J. and Crompton, R. (eds), Rethinking Class: culture, identities and lifestyle. New York NY: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dinan, C. (1977) ‘Pragmatists or feminists? The professional “single” women of Accra, Ghana’, Cahiers d’Études Africaines 17 (1): 155–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Donner, H. (2008) Domestic Goddesses: maternity, globalization and middle-class identities in contemporary India. Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Donner, H. (2017) ‘The anthropology of the middle class across the globe’, Anthropology of this Century 18 <http://aotcpress.com/articles/anthropology-middle-class-globe/>, accessed 19 April 2019.Google Scholar
Donner, H. and De Neve, G. (2011) ‘Introduction’ in Donner, H. (ed.), Being Middle-class in India: a way of life. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ehrenreich, B. (1989) Fear of Falling: the inner life of the middle class. New York NY: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Erikson, R. and Goldthorpe, J. H. (1992) The Constant Flux: a study of class mobility in industrial societies. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Errington, F. and Gewertz, D. (1997) ‘The Wewak Rotary Club: the middle class in Melanesia’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (NS) 3: 333–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foster, P. (1980) ‘Education and social inequality in sub-Saharan Africa’, Journal of Modern African Studies 18 (2): 201–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frykman, J. and Löfgren, O. (1987) Culture Builders: a historical anthropology of middle-class life. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Fuller, C. J. and Narasimhan, H. (2014) Tamil Brahmans: the making of a middle-class caste. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fumanti, M. (2006) ‘Nation building and the battle for consciousness: discourses on education in post-apartheid Namibia’, Social Analysis 50 (3): 84–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Furbank, P. N. (1985) Unholy Pleasure or the Idea of Social Class. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Garguin, E. (2012) ‘“Los Argentinos descendemos de los barcos”: the racial articulation of middle-class identity in Argentina, 1920–1960’ in López, A. R. and Weinstein, B. (eds), The Making of the Middle Class: toward a transnational history. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Goldstein, J. (2005) ‘Of marksmanship and Marx: reflections on the linguistic construction of class in some recent historical scholarship’, Modern Intellectual History 2 (1): 87–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goody, J. (1971) ‘Class and marriage in Africa and Eurasia’, American Journal of Sociology 76 (4): 585–603.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Groh-Samberg, O., Mau, S. and Schimank, U. (2014) ‘Investieren in den Status. Der voraussetzungsvolle Lebensführungsmodus der Mittelklasse’, Leviathan 42 (1): 1–30.Google Scholar
Grusky, D. B. (1994) ‘The contours of social stratification’ in Grusky, D. B. (ed.), Social Stratification: class, race, and gender in sociological perspective. Boulder CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Hareven, T. K. (1977) ‘Family time and historical time’, Daedalus 106 (2): 57–70.Google Scholar
Harrell-Bond, B. E. (1975) Modern Marriage in Sierra Leone: a study of the professional group. The Hague: Mouton & Co.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hausmann, G. and Hettling, M. (2001) ‘Civil society’ in Stearns, P. N. (ed.), Encyclopedia of European Social History: from 1350 to 2000. Volume 2. Detroit MI: Charles Scribner's Sons.Google Scholar
Heiman, R., Freeman, C. and Liechty, M. (eds) (2012) The Global Middle Classes: theorizing through ethnography. Santa Fe NM: School for Advanced Research Press.Google Scholar
Jaffrelot, C. and van der Veer, P. (eds) (2008) Patterns of Middle Class Consumption in India and China. London: Sage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
James, D. (2012) ‘Money-go-round: personal economies of wealth, aspiration and indebtedness’, Africa 82 (1): 20–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
James, D. (2014) Money from Nothing: indebtedness and aspiration in South Africa. Palo Alto CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Kalb, D. (2014) ‘Class: the urban commons and the empty sign of “the middle class” in the twenty-first century’ in Nonini, D. M. (ed.), A Companion to Urban Anthropology. New York NY: Wiley.Google Scholar
Katz, S. (1980) Marxism, Africa, and Social Class: a critique of relevant theories. Montreal: Centre for Developing-Area Studies, McGill University.Google Scholar
Kim, M. (1993) ‘Transformations of family ideology in upper-middle-class families in urban South Korea’, Ethnology 32 (1): 69–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitching, G. (1980) Class and Economic Change in Kenya: the making of an African petite bourgeoisie, 1905–1970. New Haven CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Kocka, J. (2004) ‘The middle classes in Europe’ in Kaelble, H. (ed.), The European Way: European societies in the 19th and 20th centuries. Oxford. Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Kroeker, L., O'Kane, D. and Scharrer, T. (eds) (2018) Middle Classes in Africa: changing lives and conceptual challenges. New York NY: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuper, L. (1965) An African Bourgeoisie: race, class and politics in South Africa. New Haven CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Laclau, E. and Mouffe, C. (1985) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: towards a radical democratic politics. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Lamont, M. (1992) Money, Morals, and Manners: the culture of the French and the American upper-middle class. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Landry, B. and Marsh, K. (2011) ‘The evolution of the new black middle class’, Annual Review of Sociology 37: 373–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lawler, S. (2005) ‘Introduction: class, culture and identity’, Sociology 39 (5): 797–806.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lentz, C. (1995) ‘“Unity for development”: youth associations in north-western Ghana’, Africa 65: 395–429.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lentz, C. (2009) ‘Constructing ethnicity: elite biographies and funerals in Ghana’ in Rosenthal, G. and Bogner, A. (eds), Ethnicity, Belonging and Biography: ethnographical and biographical perspectives. Berlin: Lit.Google Scholar
Lentz, C. (2015) ‘Elites of middle classes? Lessons from transnational research for the study of social stratification in Africa’. Working Paper 161. Mainz: Department of Anthropology and African Studies, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz <https://www.ifeas.uni-mainz.de/files/2019/07/AP_161.pdf>, accessed 2 February 2020.,+accessed+2+February+2020.>Google Scholar
Lentz, C. (2016) ‘African middle classes: lessons from transnational studies and a research agenda’ in Melber, H. (ed.), The Rise of Africa's Middle Class: myths, realities and critical engagements. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Le Wita, B. (1994) French Bourgeois Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Liechty, M. (2003) Suitably Modern: making middle-class culture in a new consumer society. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liechty, M. (2012) ‘Middle-class déjà vu: conditions of possibility, from Victorian England to contemporary Kathmandu’ in Heiman, R., Freeman, C. and Liechty, M. (eds), The Global Middle Classes: theorizing through ethnography. Santa Fe NM: School for Advanced Research Press.Google Scholar
Lipset, S. M. and Bendix, R. (1959) Social Mobility in Industrial Society. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
López, A. R. with Weinstein, B. (2012) ‘We shall be all: toward a transnational history of the middle class’ in López, A. R. and Weinstein, B. (eds), The Making of the Middle Class: toward a transnational history. Durham NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mabandla, N. (2013) Lahla Ngubo: the continuities and discontinuities of a South African black middle class. Leiden: African Studies Centre.Google Scholar
Manghezi, A. (1976) Class, Elite and Community in African Development. Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies.Google Scholar
Markovitz, I. L. (1977) Power and Class in Africa: an introduction to change and conflict in African politics. Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Markovitz, I. L. (1987) ‘Continuities in the study of power and class in Africa’ in Markovitz, I. (ed.), Studies in Power and Class in Africa. New York NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Marx, K. (1887 [1867]) Capital: a critique of political economy. Volume 1. Moscow: Progress Publishers <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/index.htm>, accessed 31 January 2020.Google Scholar
Marx, K. (1907 [1852]) The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Chicago IL: Charles Kerr & Co.Google Scholar
Mau, S. (2015) Inequality, Marketization and the Majority Classes: why did the European middle classes accept neo-liberalism? Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Maza, S. (2003) The Myth of the French Bourgeoisie: an essay on the social imaginary, 1750–1850. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Melber, H. (2013) ‘Africa and the middle class(es)’, Afrika Spectrum 48 (3): 111–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Melber, H. (ed.) (2016) The Rise of Africa's Middle Class: myths, realities and critical engagements. London: Zed Books.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mercer, C. (2014) ‘Middle class construction: domestic architecture, aesthetics and anxieties in Tanzania’, Journal of Modern African Studies 52 (2): 227–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milanovic, B. (2014) ‘The tale of two middle classes’, Yale Global Online, 31 July <http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/print/9416>, accessed 15 December 2014.,+accessed+15+December+2014.>Google Scholar
Miller, R. A. (1974) ‘Elite formation in Africa: class, culture and coherence’, Journal of Modern African Studies 12 (4): 521–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Modisha, G. (2007) ‘A contradictory class location? The African corporate middle class and the burden of race in South Africa’, Transformations 65: 120–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muncy, R. (2012) ‘Middle-class politics and the making of a public sphere: working toward a transnational history of the middle classes’ in López, A. R. and Weinstein, B. (eds), The Making of the Middle Class: toward a transnational history. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Neubert, D. (2016) ‘Kenya: an unconscious middle class? Between regional-ethnic mobilization and middle class lifestyles’ in Melber, H. (ed.), The Rise of Africa's Middle Class: myths, realities and critical engagements. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Neubert, D. (2019) Inequality, Socio-cultural Differentiation and Social Structures in Africa: beyond class. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nisbett, N. (2007) ‘Friendship, consumption, morality: practising identity, negotiating hierarchy in middle-class Bangalore’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (NS) 13: 935–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Noll, A. (2017) ‘Family foundations for solidarity and social mobility: mitigating class boundaries in Ghanaian families’, Sociologus 66 (2): 137–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Noret, J. (2017) ‘For a multidimensional class analysis in Africa’, Review of African Political Economy 44 (154): 654–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Dougherty, M. (2002) Consumption Intensified: the politics of middle-class daily life in Brazil. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Okeke-Ihejirika, P. E. (2004) Negotiating Power and Privilege: Igbo career women in contemporary Nigeria. Athens OH: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Oppong, C. (1981) Middle Class African Marriage: a family study of Ghanaian senior civil servants. London: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Otte, G. and Rössel, J. (2011) ‘Lebensstile in der Soziologie’, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 51 (Special Issue): 7–34.Google Scholar
Parker, D. S. (2013) ‘Introduction: the making and endless remaking of the middle class’ in Parker, D. S. and Walker, L. (eds), Latin America's Middle Class: unsettled debates and new histories. Lanham MD: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Pauli, J. (2016) ‘African marriages in transformation: anthropological insights’ in Etim, J. (ed.), Introduction to Gender Studies in Eastern and Southern Africa. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.Google Scholar
Pernau, M. (2008) Bürger mit Turban. Muslime in Delhi im 19. Jahrhundert. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.Google Scholar
Phadi, M. and Ceruti, C. (2011) ‘Multiple meanings of the middle class in Soweto, South Africa’, African Sociological Review 15 (1): 88–108.Google Scholar
Piketty, M. (2017) Capital in the Twenty-first Century. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pinches, M. (1999) ‘Cultural relations, class and the new rich of Asia’ in Pinches, M. (ed.), Culture and Privilege in Capitalist Asia. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ryan, M. P. (1981) Cradle of the Middle Class: the family in Oneida County, New York, 1790–1865. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Seed, J. (1992) ‘From the “middling sort” to middle class in late eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century England’ in Bush, M. L. (ed.), Social Order and Social Classes in Europe since 1500. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Seekings, J. (2008) ‘The rise and fall of the Weberian analysis of class in South Africa between 1949 and the early 1970s’. Working Paper 239. Cape Town: Cape Town Centre for Social Research.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sinha, M. (2012) ‘Afterword’ in López, A. R. and Weinstein, B. (eds), The Making of the Middle Class: toward a transnational history. Durham NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skeggs, B. (2015) ‘Introduction: stratification or exploitation, domination, dispossession and devaluation?’, Sociological Review 63 (2): 205–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sklar, R. L. (1979) ‘The nature of class domination in Africa’, Journal of Modern African Studies 17 (4): 531–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, D. J. (2004) ‘Burials and belonging in Nigeria: rural–urban relations and social inequality in a contemporary African ritual’, American Anthropologist 106 (3): 569–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Somers, M. (1992) ‘Narrativity, narrative identity, and social action: rethinking English working-class formation’, Social Science History 16 (4): 591–630.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Southall, R. (2016) The New Black Middle Class in South Africa. Johannesburg: Jacana.Google Scholar
Southall, R. (2018a) ‘(Middle-)class analysis in Africa: does it work?’, Review of African Political Economy 45 (157): 467–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Southall, R. (2018b) ‘What's missing? Reflections on the debate on middle class(es) in Africa’, Transformation 96: 1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spronk, R. (2012) Ambiguous Pleasures: sexuality and middle-class self-perceptions in Nairobi. Oxford and New York NY: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Stichter, S. B. (1988) ‘The middle-class family in Kenya: changes in gender relations’ in Stichter, S. B. and Parpart, J. L. (eds), Patriarchy and Class: African women in the home and workforce. Boulder CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Therborn, G. (2012) ‘Class in the 21st century’, New Left Review 78: 5–29.Google Scholar
Thompson, E. P. (1980 [1963]) The Making of the English Working Class. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Vaughan, M. K. (2012) ‘Labor professionalization, class formation, and state rule’ in López, A. R. and Weinstein, B. (eds), The Making of the Middle Class: toward a transnational history. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Vogel, E. (1963) Japan's New Middle Class: the salary man and his family in a Tokyo suburb. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wacquant, L. (1992) ‘Making class: the middle class(es) in social theory and social structure’ in McNall, S. G., Levine, R. and Fantasia, R. (eds), Bringing Class Back In: contemporary and historical perspectives. Boulder CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Wahrman, D. (1995) Imagining the Middle Class: political representation of class in Britain, ca. 1780–1840. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walker, L. (2013) Waking from the Dream: Mexico's middle classes after 1968. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Watenpaugh, K. D. (2006) Being Modern in the Middle East: revolution, nationalism, colonialism, and the Arab middle classes. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weber, M. (1968 [1922]) Economy and Society: an outline of interpretive sociology. Edited by G. Roth and C. Wittich. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Weinstein, B. (2012) ‘The making of the middle class and practices of modernity’ in López, A. R. and Weinstein, B. (eds), The Making of the Middle Class: toward a transnational history. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Welsh, B. (2008) ‘Unexpected trajectories and connections: regime change, democratization and development in Southeast Asia’ in Murphy, A. M. and Welsh, B. (eds), Legacy of Engagement in Southeast Asia. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.Google Scholar
Werbner, P. (2018) ‘Rethinking class and culture in Africa: between E. P. Thompson and Pierre Bourdieu’, Review of African Political Economy 45: 7–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
West, M. O. (2002) The Rise of an African Middle Class: colonial Zimbabwe, 1898–1965. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, E. O. (1985) Classes. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Young, L. (2003) Middle Class Culture in the Nineteenth Century: America, Australia and Britain. New York NY: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhang, J. and Sun, P. (2014) ‘When are you going to get married? Parental matchmaking and middle-class women in contemporary urban China’ in Davis, D. and Friedman, S. (eds), Wives, Husbands, and Lovers: marriage and sexuality in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and urban China. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar