scholarly journals Disciplinary Social Policy and the Failing Promise of the New Middle Classes: The Troubled Families Programme

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Nunn ◽  
Daniela Tepe-Belfrage
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Welfare Reform ◽  
Ethnic Minorities ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Life Styles ◽  
New Middle Class ◽  
Societal Responsibility

This article looks at the promise of the ‘New Middle Class’ (NMC) inherent in the neoliberal ideological ideal of individualising societal responsibility for well-being and success. The article points to how this promise enables a discourse and practice of welfare reform and a disciplining of life styles particularly targeting the very poor in society. Women and some ethnic minorities are particularly prone to poverty and then therefore also discipline. The article then provides a case study of the Troubled Families Programme (TFP) and shows how the programme and the way it is constructed and managed partly undermines the provision of the material needs to alleviate people from poverty and re-produces discourses of poor lifestyle and parenting choices as sources of poverty, thereby undermining the ‘middle-class’ promise.

The New Middle Class in the Philippines: A Case Study in Culture Change

Asian Survey ◽  
1972 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 879-886
Author(s):  
Carol H. Cespedes ◽  
Eugene Gibbs
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Culture Change ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
New Middle Class

Submerging or Clinging On Again? József Antall, Father and Son, in Hungary after 1956

2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
JÁNOS M. RAINE
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Social Background ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Hungarian Society ◽  
Upper Middle Class ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Father And Son

The aim of this case study of the two Antalls, father and son (the latter became the first Hungarian prime minister after the free elections in 1990) is to present and analyse the period that coincided with the post-1956 development of the Kádár system. Its apparent success, efficiency and partial, surrogate, legitimacy has often been explained by the so-called ‘compromise’ of the Kádárist leadership with Hungarian society after 1956, particularly the ‘old intelligentsia’ or ‘old middle classes’. In fact, while there was an obvious continuity in institutions and ideology between the classic Stalinist regime and that of Kádár, the societal and political practice of the system gradually changed. The Antalls were representative of the inter-war upper middle class (the father) and the participants in the 1956 revolution (the son). Discrimination according to their social background, prevalent in the early 1950s, diminished at the turn of the 1960s, so that someone descended from the former Christian middle class, like the younger József Antall, could be recruited into the intelligentsia.

Emerging Markets: Product and Service Opportunities for Middle and Upper Middle Class

2012 ◽  
Vol 601 ◽  
pp. 626-634
Author(s):  
Daria Loi ◽  
Subhashini Ganapathy ◽  
Sasanka Prabhala
Keyword(s):  
Rural Communities ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Research And Development ◽  
Emerging Markets ◽  
Market Segments ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Human Interactions ◽  
Recent Case Study ◽  
Upper Middle Class

The middle and upper middle class population in the often termed emerging markets is typically a less investigated target as most consumer research and development efforts for such markets are primarily focused on rural communities as well as the lower to middle class population. We believe that, in a context where emerging markets are in constant transformation and the middle to upper middle classes are on a substantial growth path, it is important to explore appropriate ways to address these market segments as they represent an opportunity space for technological research and development. This paper discusses and shares results of a recent case study where a number of concepts and products were developed for such market segments in emerging markets and subsequently tested in China, Egypt, India and Brazil. This paper is an extended version of “The rise of middle and upper middle class in emerging markets: Products and service opportunities”, published in Proceedings of the 20th Australian Conference on Computer-Human Interactions: Designing for Habitus and Habitat, OZCHI, 2008 [1].

‘God Even Blessed Me with Less Money’: Disappointment, Pentecostalism and the Middle Classes in Brazil

2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 609-632
Author(s):  
GEORGE ST. CLAIR
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Prosperity Gospel ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
New Middle Class ◽  
Jobless Growth ◽  
Stark Contrast ◽  
Middle Class People

AbstractThrough shedding light on traditional Pentecostalism in Brazil this article reveals how middle-class people in São Paulo, Brazil, manage disappointment relating to current socio-economic conditions. Ethnographic research on Brazil's oldest Pentecostal church, which preserves an anachronistic style of practice, shows how people embrace a marginal identity and thereby critique social conditions in the country. In stark contrast to newer forms of Pentecostalism, people featured in this paper respond to an ‘anti-prosperity gospel’, in which failures and setbacks are construed as signs of spiritual purity and development. In a country where a ‘new middle class’ is supposedly finding prosperity, this study shows a religiously-oriented way in which people confront the disappointing gap between the promises of neoliberalism and the realities of jobless growth.

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