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Doing being middle-class in the global South: comparative perspectives and conceptual challenges

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2020

Carola Lentz
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Abstract

Like many key terms in history and the social sciences, ‘middle class’ is at once a category ‘of social and political analysis’ and a category ‘of social and political practice’, in Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper's terms – two aspects that were, and continue to be, entangled in complex ways. Since the end of the eighteenth century, the term ‘middle class’, or the ‘middling sorts’, has been a catchword in political discourse, and it became one long before scholars defined it in any systematic fashion. Once it became a more or less well-established conceptual tool of research, however, it began to take on an academic life of its own, with scholars also using it to describe people who did not invoke this category for their own self-description. But scholarly terms could – and indeed did – also feed back into folk understandings of social stratification. In particular, the recent global popularity of the term ‘middle class’ seems to be at least in part a result of the appropriation of academic categories by policymakers. This article contributes to the discussion on African middle classes by tracing the genealogy of theoretical perspectives on class and by outlining some findings from studies of the history of European and American middle classes as well as recent research on middle classes in the global South. I discuss both the history of scholarly debates on the middle classes and what empirical studies tell us about people's contested self-categorizations, and how their understandings and practices of being middle-class have changed over time. The article argues that future research on the dynamics of African social stratification has much to gain from a regional and historical comparative perspective.

Résumé

Résumé

Comme beaucoup de termes clés de l'histoire et des sciences sociales, « classe moyenne » est à la fois une catégorie « d'analyse sociale et politique » et une catégorie « de pratique sociale et politique », selon Rogers Brubaker et Frederick Cooper; deux aspects qui s'imbriquaient de manières complexes, et continuent de le faire. Depuis la fin du dix-huitième siècle, le terme « middle class » ou « middling sorts » utilisé pour désigner la classe moyenne est un mot d'ordre du discours politique, et il en est devenu un bien avant que les universitaires le définissent de façon systématique. Mais dès lors qu'il est devenu un outil de recherche conceptuel plus ou moins bien établi, il a commencé à s'animer d'une vie académique, avec des universitaires l'utilisant également pour décrire des personnes qui n'invoquaient pas cette catégorie pour se décrire elles-mêmes. Mais les termes savants pouvaient, et ce fut le cas d'ailleurs, se retrouver également dans les interprétations populaires de stratification sociale. En particulier, la popularité mondiale récente du terme « classe moyenne » semble résulter, du moins en partie, de l'appropriation des catégories académiques par les décideurs politiques. Cet article contribue à la discussion sur les classes moyennes africaines en étudiant la généalogie des perspectives théoriques en matière de classe et en décrivant des résultats d’études de l'histoire des classes moyennes européennes et américaines, ainsi que des études récentes sur les classes moyennes du Sud. L'auteur traite à la fois de l'histoire des débats savants sur les classes moyennes et de ce que nous disent les études empiriques de l'auto-catégorisation contestée des individus, ainsi que de l’évolution au fil du temps de leur interprétation et de leur pratique de ce qu'est être de classe moyenne. L'article soutient que la recherche future sur les dynamiques de la stratification sociale africaine a beaucoup à gagner d'une perspective comparative au niveau régional et historique.

Type
The lived experiences of the African middle classes
Information
Africa , Volume 90 , Issue 3 , May 2020 , pp. 439 - 469
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Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2020

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