Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 242-258
Author(s):  
Nana Okura Gagné
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Socioeconomic Change ◽  
Late Capitalism ◽  
Dominant Ideology ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Postwar Japan ◽  
New Middle Class ◽  
Individual Self

This chapter reviews the different meanings of the new middle class, which describe the historical and cultural configurations of postwar Japan and universalized notions of socioeconomic class used in social science. It reflects on the configurations, relations, and operationalizations of the slippage between discursive and ideological characteristics of “middleness” that have been elided under the term the new middle class in postwar Japan. It also offers new insights on the understanding of dominant ideology and dominant groups, including anthropological theorizations of power, ideology, and subjectivity in late capitalism. The chapter emphasizes on the issues of individual self-cultivation and concerns of families in practice in the midst of socioeconomic change. It explains how salarymen or any other social actors represent both the nexus and product of ongoing self-cultivation and socialization in the changing global economy.

Outsourcing the Self

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sunil Bhatia
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Romantic Relationships ◽  
Call Center ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
The Self ◽  
New Middle Class ◽  
First World ◽  
Class Youth ◽  
Call Center Workers

This chapter analyzes how call center workers, who are mostly middle- and working-class youth, create narratives that are described as expressing modern forms of “individualized Indianness.” The chapter demonstrates how call center workers produce narratives of individualized Indianness by engaging in practices of mimicry, accent training, and consumption; by going to public spaces such as bars and pubs; and by having romantic relationships that are largely hidden from their families. The narratives examined in this chapter are created out of an asymmetrical context of power as young Indians work as “subjects” of a global economy who primarily serve “First World” customers. The interviews with Indian youth reflect how tradition and modernity, mimicry and authenticity, collude with each other to dialogically create new middle-class subjectivities.

Historicizing Japanese Workers and Japanese Capitalism

2021 ◽  
pp. 25-64
Author(s):  
Nana Okura Gagné
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Industrial Structure ◽  
Work And Family ◽  
Postwar Japan ◽  
New Middle Class ◽  
Japanese Workers ◽  
Historical Trajectory ◽  
Japanese Capitalism

This chapter begins with a brief historicization of salarymen from the late 1800s to the early 1990s. It focuses on the formation of the socioeconomic category of the New Middle Class and the cultural production of the new middle-class orientation within Japan's economic and industrial structure. It also traces the historical trajectory through which the modern configuration of welfare, work, and family emerged in prewar Japan and then took new shape in postwar Japan through the fractious struggle of workers and management. The chapter examines how the particular construction of the new middle class as a lived experience has been articulated through the socioeconomic category of the new middle class. It situates the contemporary discourse of neoliberal economic reforms within the historical development of Japanese corporate governance and Japanese capitalism.

scholarly journals LIVING IN UNCERTAINTY - PROSPERITY AND THE ANXIETIES OF NGO MIDDLE-CLASS WOMEN IN THE CONTEXT OF MARKETISATION AND PRIVATISATION IN VIETNAM

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Binh Trinh ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
The State ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Market Values ◽  
Moral Conduct ◽  
New Middle Class ◽  
Class Status ◽  
Individual Self ◽  
The University ◽  
Middle Strata

Studies of the new middle-class often write about the anxieties of falling behind with its members acquiring their middle-class status from uncertain and unpredictable market values. This type of anxiety is typical for members of the white-collar middle-class who often deal with pressures to maintain a conspicuous consumption level to remain in the middle strata. I argue that some of the anxieties associated with wealth experienced by the new middle class in Vietnam are also the result of a mode of governmentality that is used by the state to boost individual self-reliance and economic efficiency with the appeal of public contributions. Governmentality, in Foucault’s proposition, consists of technologies that allow the state to govern individuals from a distance with the vision of correct conduct. This mode of governance is done in Vietnam through the idea of “moral conduct”, by which the state guides the autonomous economic activities of individuals with the moral appeal of public contributions. This paper looks at the performance and experiences of Vietnamese female NGO professionals in the process of marketisation and privatisation in Vietnam. I show that their economic and professional performances demonstrate the morality of domestic responsibilities and public contributions, resembling the symbol of the virtuous woman in Vietnam’s Confucian and socialist tradition, a symbol which continues to be applauded by the state. The findings in this paper are drawn from my PhD research project at the University of Leeds, with data collected from a six-month fieldwork study conducted in Hanoi between 2016 and 2017.

Green Politics and the New Class: Selfishness or Virtue?

1989 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robyn Eckersley
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Production Process ◽  
Green Movement ◽  
New Class ◽  
Green Parties ◽  
New Middle Class ◽  
Social Composition ◽  
The Social ◽  
Green Politics ◽  
Material Values

The predominantly new middle-class social composition of the green movement has become a matter of increasing interest in the wake of the success of green parties and the growth of an international green movement. This paper considers the concept of the ‘new class' in relation to two explanations for the social composition of the green movement. The class-interest argument seeks to show that green politics is a means of furthering either middle-class or new-class interests while the ‘new childhood’ argument claims that the development of the green movement is the result of the spread of post-material values, the main bearers of which are the new class. Against these arguments a more comprehensive explanation is presented, which focuses on the education of the new class and its relative structural autonomy from the production process.

Beyond studentification in United States College Towns: Neighborhood change in the knowledge nodes, 1980–2010

2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (6) ◽  
pp. 1341-1360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan S Foote
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Knowledge Economy ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Neighborhood Change ◽  
Global Knowledge ◽  
College Towns ◽  
The World ◽  
Social Geographies

With the rise of the cognitive-cultural (or knowledge) economy, urban areas around the world have experienced significant changes in their social geographies. Studentification is one such change that has occurred in cities hosting major universities around the world. This study extends the analysis of social change to vital knowledge nodes in the networked global economy: United States college towns. K-means cluster analysis is used to identify neighborhood types in ten cities with major research universities across four Census years: 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2010. Temporal and spatial analyses are then conducted to determine how these knowledge nodes have changed with the decline of the industrial economy and the rise of the knowledge economy. The analysis indicates the presence of six neighborhood types in these college towns: Middle Class, Minority-Concentrated, Stability, Elite, Mix/Renter, and Student. Over the course of the study period, the number of Elite neighborhoods increased considerably, while the number of Middle Class neighborhoods plummeted. The number of Mix/Renter neighborhoods also increased. Spatially, Student and Minority-Concentrated neighborhoods generally remained fairly clustered in the same areas across the study period. Elite neighborhoods spread across wider geographical areas over the course of the study period. These results are compared to previous studies on neighborhood change. The comparisons reveal that the knowledge nodes show some similar patterns to studentifying cities and to rapidly growing nodes in areas with ties to the global knowledge economy.

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