The stratified middle class and the formation of ethnic identities

Ethnicities ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 146879682110253
Author(s):  
Guy Abutbul Selinger ◽  
Avraham Shnider
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Current Literature ◽  
Ethnic Identities ◽  
Ethnic Identification ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Ethnic Boundaries ◽  
Minority Adolescents ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Minority Ethnic

This article analyzes the relationship between middle-class belonging and minority ethnic identification through the narratives of Israeli adolescents in contrasting middle-class spaces. While current literature suggests that middle-class belonging will either weaken or strengthen ethnic identification, this paper demonstrates that the effect of class on ethnic identity varies between different spaces. Analyzing the narratives of 52 middle-class minority adolescents shows that spatial ethnic boundaries operating in the rural middle class lead these adolescents to construct a salient ethnic identity that can produce feelings of incongruence and subordination. However, in the urban middle-class, where spatial ethnic boundaries are less significant, adolescents develop a thin, interchangeable ethnic identity in accordance with shallow and superficial public classifications. These findings demonstrate that the middle classes are not monolithic but diverse within themselves, and point to the need to study the variety of ways diverse middle classes can affect the shaping of minority ethnic identification.

A divided city

2020 ◽  
pp. 140-184
Author(s):  
Alice Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Industrial City ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Roman Catholics

Belfast’s middle classes lived in a divided city. Politically, Belfast was divided for the period under review into Conservative and Liberal camps. Religious divisions existed between Protestants and Roman Catholics, and within Protestantism itself. Society was also separated into different classes, with the middle classes positioned above the working classes and below the aristocracy. Political, religious and class tensions existed in every industrial city, of course. However, in Belfast, religious division assumed a particularly ugly and bitter hue. This chapter focuses on an elite living in a society divided along lines of both class and religion. The relationship of Belfast’s elite to the city’s working classes and the local aristocracy is explored; while a discussion of Belfast’s middle-class Roman Catholic community assesses the extent to which it was integrated into the city’s elite. The chapter also examines the relationship between the middle classes and the city’s growing sectarianism.

7. Ethnopolitics and Nationalism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James R. Scarritt ◽  
Jóhanna K Birnir
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Developing World ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Ethnic Identities ◽  
Ethnic Conflicts ◽  
Cooperative Interactions ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter explores the relationship between ethnopolitics and nationalism, and more specifically how ethnic identity contributes to war and the amelioration of ethnic conflicts. It first considers the construction and politicization of ethnic identities — in other words, the construction of ethnic and ethnopolitical identities — before discussing the construction of a variety of nationalist identities in the developing world. It then examines the conflictual, competitive, and cooperative interactions of groups based on nationalist identities with one another and with states, along with states’ efforts to mould these interactions in ways that enhance the legitimacy of state-based nations and their support from various groups. The chapter shows that cooperative interactions tend to promote nation-building through multi-ethnic/multicultural nationalism.

scholarly journals Classing Ethnicity. Class, Ethnicity, and the Mass Politics of Taiwan's Democratic Transition

2007 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 503-538 ◽  
Author(s):  
David D. Yang
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
National Culture ◽  
Democratic Transition ◽  
Labor Politics ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Taiwanese Identity ◽  
Mass Politics

Although Taiwan is widely regarded as one of the purest examples of middle-class-driven democratization, this article suggests that the conventional accent on the middle class is misplaced. Instead, the true heroes in the struggle for democracy were the island's working classes, although proper recognition of this fact requires an empirically derived understanding of class that looks beyond formal labor politics. Although the author does not dispute the importance of ethnicity in Taiwanese politics, the findings clearly indicate that ethnic identity was in itself a class issue, as the island's working classes were the most deeply attached to a nativist Taiwanese identity, while members of the middle classes were far more successfully assimilated into the elite “national” culture. The Taiwanese experience thus provides a reminder that many political phenomena apparently framed in ethnic, sectarian terms are in fact undergirded by essentially class-based grievances.

Navigating the ethnic boundary: From ‘in-between’ to plural ethnicities among Thai middle-class migrant women in Hong Kong

2021 ◽  
pp. 144078332199875
Author(s):  
Isabella Ng ◽  
Herbary Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Host Community ◽  
Ethnic Identification ◽  
Migrant Women ◽  
Ethnic Boundaries ◽  
Younger Generation ◽  
One Year

The article examines the self-ethnic identification of Thai middle-class migrant women in Hong Kong. It looks into how different generations of Thai middle-class migrant women identify themselves differently in the host community. Drawing on a one-year ethnographic study and interviews with 20 participants, we found that the process of self-ethnic identification evolves from in-between ethnicity for the older generation to plural ethnicities for the younger generation. The way they perceive themselves, as we argue, determines how they navigate the ethnic boundaries in the host community. The results suggest that the older generation oscillates between being Thai and Hong Konger whereas the younger generation go beyond the dual ethnic identification and in so doing, they disrupt, transgress, or even subvert the ethnic boundaries set between the Thai and the Hong Kong people in the era of globalization with increasing mobility and the use of information and communication technologies.

scholarly journals Becoming a Lady: Learning to be “Classy” in Polish Adaptations of Reality Shows

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monika Borys
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Pierre Bourdieu ◽  
Class Struggle ◽  
Specific Nature ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Reality Show ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Class Habitus

Given the lineup across much of our current television landscape, we could be forgiven for thinking that the medium is utterly obsessed with class struggle. One of the most popular TV genres to exploit class difference for dramatic purposes is the reality show. This essay examines Polish adaptations of three foreign reality show formats that rely on “clash of two worlds”-type tropes to drive their narratives. The shows in question are: Projekt Lady (prod. TVN, first aired in 2016), Damy i wieśniaczki (prod. TTV, first aired in 2016), and Rolnik szuka żony (prod. TVP, first aired in 2014). Drawing on sociological concepts of class as the embodiment of a specific collection of attributes and habits (Pierre Bourdieu), the author treats the shows in question as a particular sub-type of image designed to impart lessons in class. Calling on scholarship interpreting reality show programming as a neoliberal formula that gives weight to the middle-class habitus (Beverley Skeggs, Helen Wood), this analysis considers the specific nature of the Polish social structure, and interprets the relationship between class and gender in the analyzed programs. The inquiry elucidates what could be called the Polish strain of upward mobility, which compels reality show contestants to blend attributes associated with both the lower (“peasants”) and middle classes (“ladies”).

scholarly journals SOSOK PEREMPUAN INDONESIA DALAM NOVEL-NOVEL INDONESIA MODERN

LITERA ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Djoko Sarryono
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Cultural Orientation ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Research Focus ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Interactive Analysis ◽  
Female Figures ◽  
Upper Middle Class

This study aims to describe female Indonesian figures constructed in modern Indonesian novels. The data sources were Indonesian novels presenting female main characters. The data were analyzed by means of a cyclical interactive analysis involving hermeneutic reading and understanding, holistic classification accordingto the research focus, and hermeneutic reinterpretation. The findings are as follows. There are a variety of female Indonesian figures represented in several serious Indonesian novels. Female figures’ physical-biological identity, ethnic identity, socio-economic identity, cultural orientation, worldview, life view, life attitude, andlifestyle are relatively varied. Basically, however, female figures from the modern upper-middle class are much more dominant and stronger than those from the traditional lower class. Therefore, serious modern Indonesian novels seem to an arena of ideological introduction and operation for the interest of Indonesian middle and upper-middle classes.

Ethnicity and Iberians: The Archaeological Crossroads Between Perception and Material Culture

1998 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margarita Díaz-Andreu
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Ethnic Identities ◽  
Ethnic Identification ◽  
Heterogeneous Nature ◽  
Recent Developments

A re-evaluation of how ethnicity is currently understood in archaeology is necessary in view of recent developments in the archaeology of identity. In this article, it will be argued that nationalism has led to an understanding of ethnicity as monolithic, denying in this way its heterogeneous nature. Since the 1920s, archaeologists working under the culture-historical umbrella have explicitly defined ethnicity on the basis of material culture, maintaining endless, and perhaps fruitless, debates. However, as anthropologists have been discussing since the 1970s, ethnicity is perhaps not about material culture, or not necessarily about material culture, but about perception. Archaeologists should consider ethnic identities as fluid and polymorphous, for multiple ethnic affiliations can coexist and overlap in the same individual. Ethnic identification(s) displayed by each individual will change depending on the circumstances, the interlocutor and the situation. In addition, archaeologists cannot study ethnic identity in isolation from other types of identifications – gender, religion, status, etc. – as all of them will be at play, ready to act (or to be hidden), on each particular occasion. These issues will be discussed in this article in relation to Iron Age Iberians.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ester Gallo
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
South India ◽  
Political History ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
The Relationship

The introduction highlights the importance of understanding how, in globalizing south India, families engage through memory with the question of how kinship norms, ideals, and experiences can enhance social mobility. It critically reviews and bridges three sets of literature: firstly, the historical critique developed within postcolonial and feminist tradition on the relation between colonialism, middle classes, and gendered family reforms; secondly, classical and recent anthropological approaches on political history and memory; thirdly, contemporary analysis of kinship within and beyond South Asia. The introduction argues that an analysis of the relationship between kinship, memory, and social mobility reveals to be timely and original to reconnect the well-known colonial middle-class projects of family modernity with the much less explored dimension of how (actual and aspiring) middle classes have engaged across history with these projects.

The Fall of Gods

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ester Gallo
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Family Relations ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Class Mobility ◽  
Kinship Relations ◽  
Private Domain ◽  
The Relationship

The book explores the relationship between colonial history and memory from the perspective of middle- class intergenerational relations. Drawing from a prolonged research conducted with Malayali middle classes in Kerala and in the diaspora, the analysis focuses on how specific historical events are retrieved in the present to shape kinship relations and to legitimize trajectories of class mobility. The book bridges historical analysis of gendered family relations as they developed in colonial and postcolonial times with an anthropological inquiry of the symbolic and material premises of kinship among contemporary middle classes. It provides an ethnographically grounded analysis of how middle-class status in contemporary south India is expressed by recalling family histories, and how remembrance shapes kinship ideals, norms, and experiences in domains as different as houses, conjugality, parenthood, reproduction and family size, intergenerational love and genealogical transmission. The book offers original insights on the continuities and differences between colonial and contemporary middle classes, and the role played by migration and diaspora in both contexts. It originally contributes to two interrelated and undertheorized fields within social sciences. Firstly, it addresses the need to develop further our understanding of how gendered kinship and family relations result from and express class belonging. Secondly, it unravels the complex and ambivalent relation between political history, memory, and the ‘private’ domain of family relations.

Costruire la cittŕ dei ceti medi

TERRITORIO ◽  
2013 ◽  
pp. 61-65
Author(s):  
Federico Zanfi ◽  
Gaia Caramellino
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
The Public ◽  
Residential Architecture ◽  
First Results ◽  
Architectural Models ◽  
The Relationship

This section reports the first results of a research project which examines residential architecture built for the middle classes from the 1950s until the 1970s in the cities of Turin, Milan and Rome. These essays - which focus mainly on Milan and Turin - dwell on various aspects of the phenomenon which include the following: the relationship between urban planning and the contraction of middle class cities, the role of private sector operators; the involvement of the public sector through forms of housing that are subsidised with concessions by government; the role of property developers; the issue of the ‘translation' of high-end and standard international architectural models towards a broader market connected with consumer models and tastes expressed by the growing middle classes.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document