The Rise and Fall of Kenyan Entrepreneurs

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maike Voigt
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Special Regard ◽  
Economic Trends ◽  
Life Courses ◽  
Empirical Material

This book analyses middle-class enterprises in Kenya with special regard to their founders’ social mobility. Using concrete events, individual biographies and in-depth empirical material, Maike Voigt demonstrates how the interplay of personal and familial characteristics with larger political and economic trends determines individual social mobility. Methodologically innovative, ethnographically sound and with analytical clarity, this study highlights the short-term changes, insecurity and opportunities inherent in entrepreneurs’ life courses. It is a thought-provoking contribution to empirical and conceptual debates on social mobility, entrepreneurship and the rise and fall of the middle classes in contemporary African societies and beyond.

Middle-Class Voices, c.1969–1979

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Common Culture ◽  
Upward Social Mobility ◽  
Post War ◽  
Class Distinction ◽  
Middle Class People

This chapter uses three different source bases to examine middle-class attitudes towards class and social change in the 1970s: interviews from Paul Thompson’s Edwardians oral history project, the journalistic study Voices from the Middle Class, by Jane Deverson and Katharine Lindsay, and the diaries of an upwardly mobile man, deposited with Mass Observation. It argues that some older middle-class people in the 1970s still thought of class as something given by birth and breeding, and still felt comfortable voicing class prejudices. However, even among older generations, some recognized that such attitudes were no longer widely acceptable. Younger generations of the middle classes were far more heterogeneous, and many younger middle-class people rejected class distinction and tradition. Social change, particularly the expansion of upward social mobility in the post-war decades, meant the middle classes were more heterogeneous and less bound by a common culture.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ester Gallo
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Global History ◽  
Joint Family ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Economic Strategies

The conclusion argues for a reconsideration of the place hold by kinship in postcolonial trajectories of social mobility. The reading of present middle-class modernities through the lens of kinship recalling and experiences provides a necessary balance to the ongoing focus on new middle classes as mainly enmeshed in political activism and economic strategies of mobility. The book suggests how, among Nambudiris, the historical move from nationalist engagement towards contemporary liberalization has been accompanied by the questioning of any kinship project based on unproblematic ideas of joint family, caste purity, and intergenerational hierarchies. Alternative ways of conceiving kinship have emerged, based on the idea of collective suffering and sacrifice, as well as on the necessity of territorial, caste, and religious mingling. It suggests how middle-class identities are framed today not only by a nostalgic attachment to an idealized past, but also by a historically-grounded reconsideration of the importance of kinship ruptures in actively participating to global history.

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.

Beauty and Quality for All

2019 ◽  
pp. 453-474
Author(s):  
María A. Cabrera Arús
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
State Socialist

This article focuses on sartorial visions put forth by institutions and representatives of the Cuban regime throughout the 1960s to the 1980s, in particular the visions of modernity produced by and circulated through the institutions of fashion and clothing production of the Cuban state. It presents these visions as oriented to put forth a figured world of power aimed at persuading individuals to participate in the construction of the communist future by catering to the aspirational dreams of the middle class. The article concludes that such an imaginary helped in the short term to consolidate and legitimize the Cuban state socialist regime, allowing the new socialist middle classes to reinvent themselves as consumers, while participating in the construction of socialism. Yet, at the same time, for many people these visions were mostly a mirage, as fashionable clothes were not for sale.

Urban brands, culture and social division: Creativity, tension and differentiation among middle class consumers

2013 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 324-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonia Bookman
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Cultural Consumption ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Cultural Boundaries ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City ◽  
Exchange District ◽  
Empirical Material ◽  
Theoretical Developments

This article considers the relationship between urban brands, consumption and socio-spatial division in the city, drawing on recent theoretical developments in the sociology of brands and empirical material from a study of the Exchange District in the city of Winnipeg, Canada. Focusing on the theme of creativity, the article uses interview data to examine how middle class residents, workers and visitors engage with the creative possibilities and cultural consumption the Exchange District brand offers. At stake in this process is not only the surfacing of a particular kind of creative culture and neighborhood, but also the performance and positioning of middle class identities. In this process, creativity is elaborated in contradictory and often unintended ways. Parallel to existing work on authenticity and class, the article argues that different notions and practices of creativity are bound up with tensions between moral and cultural boundaries, constituting horizontal divisions between the middle classes who inhabit this urban space.

scholarly journals Escaping India’s culture of education: Migration desires among aspiring middle-class young men

Ethnography ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 515-534 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Sancho
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
Overseas Students ◽  
Social Responsibilities ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Culture Of Education

Research on Indian overseas students in Australia has shown that there is an intricate connection between class and migration processes. Yet most of this work has focused on the experiences of students already abroad. Research on the formulation of migration-decisions and class dynamics from the sending side has been slow to emerge. This paper fills this gap and locates the analysis of migration desires within the literature on the Indian middle classes. I demonstrate how a middle-class culture of education that articulates hegemonic experiences, aspirations, and trajectories drives many aspiring middle-class young men to consider migrating as an alternative path to social mobility. Migration emerges as a temporary strategy geared towards accruing economic and cultural capital necessary for the fulfilment of class-based personal ambitions and wider social responsibilities at home. Migration is shown to stretch the boundaries of processes of class formation that now straddles multiple sites, resources, and aspirations.

Convergence and Competition Among the New Turkish Middle Classes

2018 ◽  
Vol 117 (803) ◽  
pp. 350-354
Author(s):  
Erol Balkan ◽  
Ahmet Öncü
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Transformative Change ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
The World ◽  
Upper Middle Class

“The AKP's neoliberal regime created the ideology and conditions for transformative change in Turkey's new upper-middle-class culture, which trickled down to both the laic and Islamic middle-class factions.” Fourth in a series on social mobility around the world.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document