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EDITORIAL. - Caught in the Middle? On the Middle class and its relevance in the contemporary Middle East / Karolin Sengebusch, Ali Sonay. - S. 4-10. - ANTI/THESIS: Has the Middle class been a motor of the Arab Spring?. - Thesis: The misunderstandings about the role of the Middle classes / Rachid Ouaissa. - S. 12-16. - The false question of the Middle class / Benoit Challand. - S. 17-21. - META. - What is "Middle class"? In search for an appropriate concept / Dieter Neubert. - S. 23-35 . - Close Up. - Pierre Bourdieu: Transformation societies and the Middle class / Eva Barlösius. - S. 37-44 . - FOCUS. - Struggles of distinction: young women constructing their class identity in Egypt's americanized milieu / Sina Birkholz. - S. 46-62 . - Public education: a route into Lebanon's Middle class in the 1960s and early 1970s / Youssef Zbib. - S. 63-73. - The politics of social action in Morocco / Shana Cohen. - S. 74-82

This article discusses the preliminary findings of an ongoing research project on the characteristics and dynamics of Azerbaijan's urban middle class. The aim of this article is to examine what 'middle class' means in the country currently when new westernized consumption practices and lifestyle aspirations meet traditional local values. Additionally, what is the social role that the new middle class plays in the country's development? Based on ethnographic data collected throughout 2016 in Baku, this contribution argues that the middle class identity is more than an interplay between the accumulation of material goods, education and occupation; middle-class belonging is also defined by linguistic identity and assumed modernity.

A review essay on books by: Barbara Ehrenreich, Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989); & Katherine S. Newman, Falling from Grace: The Experience of Downward Mobility in the American Middle Class (New York: The Free Press, 1988 [see listings in IRPS No. 64]). Ehrenreich offers a critical examination of popular media, government policy statements, & social science literature to trace the development of class consciousness among the professional-managerial middle class. She argues that the political inclination of the middle class is not predetermined by its class position, but is contingent on its class consciousness. Intended to heighten the understanding of what it means to be middle class in the US, Newman uses ethnography to examine those Americans who experienced downward mobility during the 1980s, maintaining that the experience is not an aberration in US society. Newman is criticized for assigning her subjects to the middle class based not on their relation to production but on their rates & types of consumption. W. Howard

The middle class is placed between labour and capital. It neither directly awns the means of production that pumps out the surplus generated by wage labour power, nor does it, by its own labour, produce the surplus which has use and exchange value. Broadly speaking, this class consists of the petty bourgeoisie and the white-collar workers. The former are either self-employed or involved in the distribution of commodities and the latter are non-manual office workers, supervisors and professionals. Thus, in terms of occupation, shopkeepers, salesmen, brokers, government and non-government office-workers, writers, teachers, and self-employed professionals, such as engineers, pleaders, doctors, etc., constitute the middle class. Most of these occupations require at least some degree of formal education. This middle class is primarily a product of capitalist development and the expansion of the functions of the state in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Though the petty bourgeoisie and managers did exist in precapitalist society, they constituted a tiny class. Industrial development and expansion of markets require not only a larger managerial class than earlier, but also impel the state to shoulder the responsibilities of monitoring market competition and resolving the contradictions of capitalist development. This includes formation and implementation of welfare programmes to minimise tension in society. For carrying out these functions, the state also requires a managerial class. Formal education contributes to the expansion of this class. It is difficult to estimate the size of this class in contemporary India. It is certainly very large. According to the calculations made by Ranjit Sahu (1986), the number of white-collar employees is larger than that of industrial workers.' A large majority of the members of the middle class belong to the upper and middle castes. While scanning literature on the subject, one is disappointed at the absence of studies on middle-class movements per se, whereas one finds ...

This book discusses the viability of «importing» the middle class to Poland. The 1990s were a step forward in the formation of the Polish middle class and, systematically yet barely discernible in daily life, the process was triggered by an increase in consumption and affluence. However, the changes of attitudes, life goals and value systems distinct for the Western middle class are ambiguous and rather slow in Poland. They ensue mainly from the changes in new social structures and the behavioral rationality of consumers. It appears that the middle class in Poland will not emerge as an exact c

The main focus of this report is the question, 'To what extent are welfare transfers and services in Australia directed towards the 'middle class''? However, this question makes most sense when understood in the context of the wider debate about whether such middle class welfare is desirable. Consequently, the report commences with a discussion of the role of the state in providing or funding `welfare services' in mixed economy societies like Australia. 'Welfare' is defined here to include government support in cash or kind provided to individuals and households. This includes education, health, social security and welfare, housing and community services, as well as the tax expenditures in these areas. The report focuses upon the most important components of these: education, health, and social security, together with superannuation tax expenditures.

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Original Title -- Original Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- 1. Class Analysis and the Entrepreneurial Middle Class -- 2. Technological Change, the Occupational Structure and the Entrepreneurial Middle Class -- 3. The Formation and Growth of Small Businesses: the Case of the Building Industry -- 4. The Self-employed -- 5. Small Employers -- 6. Owner-controllers -- 7. Owner-directors and Family-owned Firms -- 8. Conclusions: Entrepreneurship and the Middle Class -- Methodological Appendix -- Bibliography -- Index.

A review article on a book by Jonas Frykman & Orvar Lofgren, Culture Builders: A Historical Anthropology of Middle-Class Life (Gills, John [Tr], New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers U Press, 1987 [(1979) see listing in IRPS No. 64]). After describing the emergence of general ideas about time, space, family, household, & gender in the Swedish middle class (Mc), 1880-1910, this work focuses on the development of concepts of health, cleanliness, sexuality, & corporeality. It is contended that the evolution of bourgeois life & thought was motivated by a need to distinguish the working class (Wc) from the aristocracy & the peasantry. This self-perpetuating ideology of the bourgeoisie came to be imposed on other social classes as a form of imperialistic cultural warfare. The differences between the bourgeoisie & the peasantry & Wc are elaborated through the themes of the compartmentalization of the world, & the obsession with control in their own lives. It is argued that the notion of control is so prevalent in this work that the Swedish Mc appears culturally straitjacketed, rather than as the creative architects of Swedish culture. J. Sadler