scholarly journals Rationalising Racial Inequality: Ideology, Hegemony and Post-Racialism among the Black and South Asian Middle-Classes

Sociology ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 671-687 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Meghji ◽  
Rima Saini
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Racial Prejudice ◽  
The Political ◽  
False Consciousness ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Racial Progress

Drawing upon 38 qualitative interviews with Black and South Asian middle-class individuals we theorise post-racialism as a hegemonic ideology. While research tends to focus on how racialised people experience racial inequality, some of our participants rationalised such inequality through a post-racial understanding. This post-racial understanding involves commitments to racial progress and transcendence, the view that racism is no longer a societal issue; race-neutral universalism, the belief that we live in a colourblind meritocracy; and a moral equivalence between anti-racism and anti-racialism, allowing for forms of ‘cultural’ racial prejudice. We examine how these components of post-racialism travel from the political macro-ideological level, to the micro-phenomenological level. Through this analysis we argue that these post-racial rationalisations are not the result of false consciousness, but reflect how post-racialism, as a hegemonic ideology, can manifest itself as common-sense and consistent with particular individuals’ histories of mobility and success.

A conjunctural account of upper- and middle-class support for Rodrigo Duterte

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (6) ◽  
pp. 651-673
Author(s):  
Marco Garrido
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
The Political ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Political Scene ◽  
Over Time

Philippine scholars have largely interpreted Duterte’s support among the upper and middle class as a rejection of the previous administration’s incremental reformism. They also point to the growing appeal of a politics of discipline. These explanations are insufficient. They cannot tell us why the upper and middle class supported Duterte when they did in 2016. The Aquino administration was not the first to disappoint and Duterte hardly the first avatar of discipline to appear on the political scene. In this article the author argues that we need to understand support for Duterte as having crystallized over time with respect to a series of events. Specifically, we need to account for the trajectory of democracy in the Philippines and the contingency of support for him. By placing this support in conjunctural context, we are better able to understand the upper and middle classes’ predisposition to ‘strong leaders’ and their turn to Duterte in 2016.

Democracy

2021 ◽  
pp. 75-90
Author(s):  
Charles Devellennes
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
The Political ◽  
French Society ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Lower Middle Class ◽  
Political Body ◽  
Positive Freedom ◽  
Peasant Revolt ◽  
Important Notion

This chapter deals with democracy and Rousseau's participative polity. The demands of positive freedom are also those of the political body, constituted of citizens, to organize itself. The chapter explores this ever-important notion. No freedom can be complete without a fully democratized state — and this includes the subjection of the economy to public rule. The national dimension of the movement is clearly established. Although it is largely working class, it has involved many other segments of society and can best be described as a movement of the small-middle stratum of citizens — either lower-middle class or upper-working class — what is described as 'the small-mean class'. It has been foreshadowed by police tactics against the banlieues; it has involved the most modest parts of French society directly, who have largely contributed to the movement, the middle classes, who have been commenting on it and trying to portray it as a jacquerie, or peasant revolt, and the upper classes, who have seen their iconic boulevards closed off and vandalized.

The White Mob, (In) Equality Before the Law, and Racial Common Sense: A Critical Race Reading of the Negro Question in “Reflections on Little Rock”

2020 ◽  
pp. 009059172094321
Author(s):  
Ainsley LeSure
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Racial Integration ◽  
The Political ◽  
Critical Race ◽  
Little Rock ◽  
Racial Gaps ◽  
Formal Equality

This article argues that Hannah Arendt’s controversial essay “Reflections on Little Rock,” when situated within her analysis of Jewish assimilation, has an astute insight: racial integration and the decrease of the racial gaps in material inequality, without taking seriously the political project of building a world in common, only intensify racism in racist polities. This occurs because attempts to extend formal equality to the racially dominated give rise to the rule of racial common sense, a result of a clash between the political structures of equality and the racial inequality practiced in quotidian interracial exchanges occurring in civil society. Though Arendt’s work on racism echoes criticisms of racial integration leveled by racial realist and pessimistic accounts of the Civil Rights struggle, her work points to a more expansive practice of “the political” that calls for the institutional (re)design of formal politics as an important strategy against racism.

The Autocratic Middle Class

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Bryn Rosenfeld
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
Development Strategies ◽  
The Political ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Political Preferences ◽  
Support For Democracy ◽  
Popular Pressure ◽  
Communist Countries

This chapter seeks to expand the grasp of authoritarian resilience and bottom-up pressures for democratization in states where economic growth is increasing the size of the middle-class. It explains why and under what conditions growth of the middle-class may not increase popular pressure on regimes to democratize. It also looks at a wide array of survey data on the political preferences and behaviors of the middle-classes in the post-communist countries. The chapter emphasizes that a variety of development strategies can drive an expansion of the middle-class, which differ in their effect on the formation of democratic constituencies. It examines multiple pathways to expansion of the middle-class that lead to greater support for democracy.

Indian middle-class support for Modi may prove fickle

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
The Political ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Bharatiya Janata Party ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Political Responses

Significance Proponents of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's economic agenda await the political responses of India's urban middle classes. It was above all the urban middle-class vote at the 2014 general elections that took Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and its National Democratic Alliance (NDA), to its sweeping victory. Impacts BJP could become isolated by relying too much on the middle-class vote. Its lack of interest in rural voters is reflected in its neglect of agrarian strife. Middle-class voters seek quality employment, which Modi's economic policy is failing to generate.

scholarly journals The Political Orientation of the Middle and Lower Classes in Iran (1997-2013)

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 41
Author(s):  
Ali Abolali Aghdaci ◽  
Parisa Khorasaniesmaeili
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Positive Relationship ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Main Question ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
The Third ◽  
Political Orientations ◽  
Independent Variable

It is well-known that there is a positive relationship between class position and the political orientation of citizens. Insuch a way that the class position is considered as an independent variable and political orientations as dependentvariables. In this research, we will try to survey the political orientations of middle and lower classes in Iran in thetwo states of Reformist and Principals, namely, the presidency of Khatami, and Ahmadinejad. The main question isthat the growth of the middle class tends to make progress in countries, but why the quantitative growth of this classin Iran, has not led to proper progress in our country? The hypothesis of this article is as follows: The growth of themiddle class in the advanced countries is linked to their democratic political structures, while in the third worldcountries due to the rentierity, the middle classes are made by governments. Therefore, they cannot actindependently and be effective in the political and cultural development of countries.

scholarly journals Capitalismo cool y clase media periférica en Animales domésticos de Marta Sanz

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rubén Pérez-Hidalgo
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Power Distribution ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Middle Classes

Marta Sanz’s novel Animales domésticos (2003) is an exploration of what it means to be middle class in Spain. This analysis explores a specific contention in the symbolic relationship between centre and periphery in the current power distribution within the European Union: that of being a European middle-class subject in a Spain ruled by neoliberalism. This issue is examined through the prism of Jim McGuigan’s theorisation on cool capitalism, which in this reading of Sanz’s novel allows the characters to cope with both personal and social disaffection by wearing a mask crafted by a certain middle-class ideology particular to Spain. The novel then becomes a symbolic playground in which such middle-class ideology characteristic of neoliberalism is shown as rooted in Francoism, inequality and chronic disaffection. This ultimately points at the impossibility of being represented as belonging to the centre (i.e. to the European middle classes) in the periphery (i.e. in a Spain that occupies a subaltern position in the political economy set by the European Union). Accordingly, in Spain one can only aspire to be a permanent contradiction: a peripheral middle class.

Palestinian Diaspora Communities in Latin America and Palestinian Statehood

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-120
Author(s):  
Yousef M. Aljamal ◽  
Philipp O. Amour
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
South America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The Political ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Latin Americans ◽  
Political Views ◽  
The Right

There are some 700,000 Latin Americans of Palestinian origin, living in fourteen countries of South America. In particular, Palestinian diaspora communities have a considerable presence in Chile, Honduras, and El Salvador. Many members of these communities belong to the professional middle classes, a situation which enables them to play a prominent role in the political and economic life of their countries. The article explores the evolving attitudes of Latin American Palestinians towards the issue of Palestinian statehood. It shows the growing involvement of these communities in Palestinian affairs and their contribution in recent years towards the wide recognition of Palestinian rights — including the right to self-determination and statehood — in Latin America. But the political views of members of these communities also differ considerably about the form and substance of a Palestinian statehood and on the issue of a two-states versus one-state solution.

The French Directory: Mirage of the Moderates

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. R. Palmer
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Constitutional Regime ◽  
Opposite Extreme

This chapter details events following the end of the Terror and the political and emotional crisis of the Year II. The question that a great many Frenchmen put to themselves both in France and in the emigration, and a question to which observers throughout Europe and America awaited the answer, was whether some kind of moderate or constitutional regime would be durably established. The next four years showed that constitutional quietude was still far away. The difficulty was that not everyone agreed on what either moderation or justice should consist in. Justice, for some, required the punishment of all revolutionaries and their sympathizers. For others, it meant a continuing battle against kings, priests, aristocrats, and the comfortable middle classes. Both groups saw in “moderation” a mere tactic of the opposition, and moderates as the dupes of the opposite extreme. Compromise for them meant the surrender of principle. It meant truckling with an enemy that could never be trusted, and had no real intention of compromise.

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