Introduction: The Middle Class in Post-socialist Europe: Ethnographies of Its “Good Life”

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 423-440
Author(s):  
Magdalena Crăciun ◽  
Ștefan Lipan
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Special Section ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
Current Period ◽  
The Face ◽  
Political Turmoil

In this special section, drawing from ethnographic research undertaken in Estonia, Russia, Romania, and Bulgaria between 2013 and 2017, we argue that in post-socialist Europe the notions of “middle class” and “good life” have become interchangeable. Related dialectically, each can be substituted for the other as a signifier of a field of aspirations and possibilities. In the current period of persistent economic crisis, deepening social inequality, and growing political turmoil, this interchangeability is a significant ideational conjunction, making it possible to declare middle-class aspirations inherently ethical and thus depoliticise them. Equally important, this interchangeability sustains the continuous idealisation of middle-classness in the face of accumulating frustrations, disappointments, and disillusionments among both the aspiring and the more established middle classes. Nevertheless, our interlocutors differ in their understanding of the kind of “good life” that middle-classness supports. Beyond individual horizons of expectations and socio-economic positions, these differences stem from their experience of recent economic and political crises and from their location at the more, and the less, prosperous local and global “margins.” These differences illustrate the fluidity of these signifiers, which unify an otherwise heterogeneous set of meanings, practices, and relationships.

Modernity, Print Media, and the Middle Class in Colonial East Africa

2019 ◽  
pp. 105-122
Author(s):  
Emma Hunter
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
East Africa ◽  
The Other ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Colonial Economy ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The One ◽  
Racial Hierarchies

This chapter takes a look at colonial East Africa. On the one hand, the chapter shows that the colonial economy and racial hierarchies of East Africa offered little potential for the growth of an African bourgeoisie. On the other hand, it demonstrates that in the cultural rather than the economic sphere, a slightly different picture emerges. Looking at the Swahili-language government and the mission newspapers of colonial Zanzibar and Tanganyika between the 1880s and the 1930s, the chapter reveals the ways in which a small but growing literate elite in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century East Africa used the medium of print in order to allow them to create “a space in which new collectivities could be imagined and identities constructed.” The particular space offered by newspapers and periodicals thus provided a possibility for African middle classes to create a distinct public sphere and to assert their distinctiveness by rhetorically identifying with, and making a claim of belonging to, an imagined global bourgeoisie.

“Uncanny Domesticity” in Contemporary American Fiction: The Case of Jhumpa Lahiri

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (54) ◽  
pp. 94-105
Author(s):  
Jelena Šesnić
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Immigrant Families ◽  
Domestic Space ◽  
The Other ◽  
American Fiction ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
Jhumpa Lahiri ◽  
Contemporary American Fiction ◽  
The Face

The argument contends that Jhumpa Lahiri’s fiction – in particular her two novels to date, The Namesake (2003) and The Lowlands (2013) – features a combination of the elements of homeliness and estrangement, domestic and foreign, ultimately, self and the other, that evokes the Freudian concept of the uncanny. Placing it in the context of the diasporic family dynamics, prevalent in Lahiri’s fiction, the uncanny effect may be seen to reside in the unspoken secrets and repressed content passed on from the first to the second generation and disturbing the neat acquisition of the trappings of middle-class domesticity. Drawing on recent models of the “geopolitical novel” (Irr), the “new immigrant fiction” (Koshy) and the “South Asian diasporic novel” (Grewal), the reading engages with the irruption of the unhomely into the domestic space, sustained by immigrant families in the face of local and global disturbances.

‘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.

Feeling ‘Like a Work-Girl’: Class, Intimacy and Alienation in ‘The Garden Party’

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Thorndike-Breeze
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Class Relations ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
The Face ◽  
Upper Middle Class

This essay argues that ‘The Garden Party’ confronts us with the uncanny intimacy and alienation created by class relations in the upper-middle-class household at the turn of the century. The consequences of protagonist Laura Sheridan’s desire and failure to transcend what she calls ‘absurd class distinctions’ (288) are well established in Mansfield criticism, and psychological readings of ‘The Garden Party’ often consider how the working class Other influences Laura’s developing subjectivity. In this essay, I draw upon similar psychological frameworks to examine how ‘The Garden Party’ deals with the idea of working-class selves – not just Others. I contend that, though it does not render the inner lives of its working-class characters, ‘The Garden Party’ still raises important questions about the selfhood of the Other, and the uncanny, sometimes abject, sense of the Other within one’s self.Through a series of uncanny parallels between middle and working-class life, ‘The Garden Party’ collapses the distance between Laura and the working class. As it does, it confronts us with questions about what it means to stare the working class Other in the face – as Laura stares into the swollen, grief-stricken face of Scott’s widow – and to realize that the Other is at the core of the self.

scholarly journals Doing the Business of Faith: The Captalistic Dhammakaya Movement and the Spiritually-Thirsty Thai Middle Class

MANUSYA ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rungrawee Chalermsripinyorat
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Economic Recession ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Consumer Product ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Alternative Path ◽  
The Face

Dhammakaya, an active, affluent and expanding Buddhist religious movement, became a focus of public attention and media scrutiny in the last quarter of 1998 due to its controversial practice of dogged solicitation for donations to build a grand Maha Dhammakaya Jedi Structure worth nearly one billion US$, in the face of severe economic recession. Some Buddhist monks and scholars, both orthodox and radical, attacked the movement as a distortion and commercialization of Buddhism. If the Dhammakaya movement offers a novel religious package as alleged by some critics, it is worth examining why this consumer product has gained an upsurge of popularity among urban middle classes in modern Thai society. This paper argues that even though capitalistic as the Dhammakaya has been viewed, it is ironically one of the most successful resurgent Buddhist movements in contemporary Thailand. It offers the urban middle classes an alternative path to realize their novel vision of Buddhism and construct their new identity. The popularity of the movement, in turn, manifests the failure of the Sangha in coming to terms with changing Thai society. The first section of this paper discusses how Buddhism has been transformed in the process of modernization. In the second section, I examine the case of Wat Phra Dhammakaya as a new religious movement in contemporary Thailand. The last section discusses the Dhammakaya controversy and its implications.

scholarly journals Structures, feelings and savoir faire: Ghana's middle classes in the making

Africa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 90 (3) ◽  
pp. 470-488
Author(s):  
Rachel Spronk
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Structures Of Feeling ◽  
Class Status ◽  
Raymond Williams

AbstractThe concept of ‘middle class’ in African societies has been recognized recently but at the same time it resists clear-cut definition. Rather than seeking clearer classification, I propose to embrace its contested nature as productive, seeing ‘middle class’ not as a category that we can find ‘out there’ and measure, but as a classification-in-the-making. Middle-class status, or a particular idea of the good life, is a position people strive towards, but what this entails depends on context and place. The study of the pursuit of social mobility in Ghana during colonialism, independence and the post-Cold War period – of those who have successfully improved their livelihoods – provides knowledge about the middle class in the making in different eras and under different conditions. I propose a three-pronged approach to study this processual nature: Raymond Williams’ notion of ‘structures of feeling’ helps unravel the shifting affective qualities of the changing political economy, while Sara Ahmed's focus on the ‘feelings of structure’ zooms in on agency as an important tool to analyse how middle-class trajectories unfold over time. Lastly, the availability of advantageous conditions is not enough to stimulate change; one needs the savoir faire to enact them.

scholarly journals Going up or getting out? Professional insecurity and austerity in the South African health sector

Africa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 90 (3) ◽  
pp. 548-567 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Hull
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Professional Identity ◽  
South African ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
African Health ◽  
Kwazulu Natal ◽  
South African Health ◽  
Structural Shifts

AbstractAs a precondition of belonging, professionalism is often a taken-for-granted feature of being middle-class. Yet ethnographic attention to experiences of work reveals that professional identity can be fragile. Drawing on ethnographic research among nurses in KwaZulu-Natal, this article traces the feelings of precarity about work and the ambivalence that pervades ideas of professionalism. This ambiguity arises partly out of a peculiarly South African story in which histories of professionalism are entwined with the repressive apartheid project of separate development. Many of the professionals working as teachers, nurses, lawyers and administrators today were trained in the former ‘homelands’. Practices of professionalism are entangled with those of clientelism inherited from this earlier period of homeland politics. These local histories combine with wider processes of neoliberalism, as conditions of austerity produce structural shifts towards casualization. The article traces these dynamics in the stories of two nurses and considers what may be at stake politically as middle-class trajectories are threatened. Moving away from a view of the middle classes as either democratic or anti-democratic, feelings of ambivalence about work make questions of political allegiance an ambiguous and fraught matter.

Mimetic Monsters

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-93
Author(s):  
Timothy Beal
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Book Of Job ◽  
Edge Of Chaos ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Relationship

This article reads between two recent explorations of the relationship between religion, chaos, and the monstrous: Catherine Keller’s Face of the Deep and Author's Religion and Its Monsters. Both are oriented toward the edge of chaos and order; both see the primordial and chaotic as generative; both pursue monstrous mythological figures as divine personifications of primordial chaos; both find a deep theological ambivalences in Christian and Jewish tradition with regard to the monstrous, chaotic divine; both are critical of theological and cultural tendencies to demonize chaos and the monstrous; and finally, both read the divine speech from the whirlwind in the book of Job as a revelation of divine chaos. But whereas one sees it as a call for laughter, a chaotic life-affirming laughter with Leviathan in the face of the deep, the other sees it as an incarnation of theological horror, leaving Job and the reader overwhelmed and out-monstered by God. Must it be one way or the other? Can laughter and horror coincide in the face of the deep?

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