•It explores how Chinese new middle class have produced a new rural landscape.•The paper combines the symbolic landscape and lived landscape perspectives.•RTMs produce a symbolically authentic ...landscape of local and global characteristics.•This research enriches our knowledge of gentrification in a non-Western context.
Landscape change has long been a key characteristic of gentrification research. While much of this research has examined the intention of the middle class to consume authenticity and the consequent landscape changes in gentrified neighborhoods in the Global North, much less attention has been given to contexts in the developing world. This paper addresses this gap by discussing an empirical case of the rural landscape produced by Rural Tourism Makers (RTMs) – a group of new middle class– in China. This research is based on participant observation and twenty-three interviews with RTMs running Minsu guesthouses, a type of tourist accommodation involving the skilled renovation of existing village buildings. To illustrate the empirical nuances, the research draws insights from two perspectives on landscape, namely the symbolic landscape and the lived landscape, to show how RTMs have produced a new rural landscape of local and global characteristics and to examine the authenticity of these landscapes. In so doing, the research enriches our knowledge of gentrification in a non-Western context by analyzing a gentrified rural landscape in the Chinese context, produced by the emerging Chinese new middle class and their westernized consumption preferences. Meanwhile, the authenticity of this new rural landscape, which is based on RTMs’ expectations and imagination, strengthens the constructionist view of authenticity in gentrification studies.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
: If according to Terry Eagleton (The Ideology of the Aesthetic 1990:28), the aesthetic is from the start “a contradictory, double‐edged concept”, how are seemingly innocent acts of viewing and ...consuming aesthetically pleasing landscapes implicated in the neoliberal politics of urban restructuring? Using contemporary Shanghai as a case study, this paper critically examines the role of the aesthetic in the politics of exclusion and urban segregation in post‐Socialist Shanghai where the restructuring and commodification of erstwhile public welfare housing have led to the rapid development of private “middle‐class” gated enclaves. A central objective of this paper is to excavate the underlying cultural politics of neoliberalism and demonstrate how the aestheticization of urban spaces in Shanghai has become increasingly intertwined with and accentuated by neoliberal ideologies and exclusionary practices in the city. Imbricated in the pristine neighborhoods of Shanghai's gated communities are the fault lines of social division and class distinction that are rapidly transforming urban China.
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BFBNIB, DOBA, FZAB, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
This article adds to contemporary analyses of neoliberal subjectivities by focusing on middle-class yoga practitioners in Istanbul, Turkey. Drawing on in-depth interviews, it questions the dominant ...interpretation of yoga as a form of neoliberal governance and suggests that within the nexus of neoliberal globalisation, autocratisation and precarisation, practices that are often labeled ‘lifestyle consumption’ might provide individuals with the discursive tools to question entrepreneurial norms. Expanding the geographical scope of existing research as well as providing a theoretically informed analysis of empirical data, the article makes an original contribution to understandings of neoliberal subjectivities by bridging work on neoliberal subjectivities and lifestyle politics.
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NUK, OILJ, SAZU, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
•We examine the NMC considering their education, occupation, ownership of assets, values, expectations and attitudes. We present two clusters according to values as seculars and conservatives. While ...identifying themselves as middle class, NMC favor income, education, car, lifestyle and culture.•NMC look mostly for reputation and quality in their purchases.•If their income is doubled, buying a house is number one priority. As for expectations, conservatives are hopeful for the future, while seculars are desperate.•Expenditures of the NMC are greatest for food and non-alcoholic beverages. Conservatives seem trying to catch up with seculars in trying new products, going to vacations etc. When they have a child, Turkish NMC is "children oriented" in their expenditures.
Although the middle class phenomenon is a widely investigated topic within a wide range of academic fields such as sociology, political sciences, anthropology, the current study concentrates on the middle class from a marketing perspective in the context of an important Emerging Market—Turkey. The definition we adapt in this study pertaining to the new middle class includes the households that have gained substantial disposable income and have experienced substantial lifestyle changes since the market liberalization reforms which commenced in the 1980s. We first present the importance of the middle class in emerging markets (especially the BRIC), the concept of middle class and the new middle class phenomenon. We then review the literature on the new middle class in Turkey and we explore whether secular and conservative subgroups of the new middle class differ in consumptional and attitudinal dimensions. Finally, we offer preliminary insights based on a qualitative study with 36 new middle class consumers in urban Turkey.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
Recently, large parts of India and the global South have experienced a rapid transformation from mud to cement houses, which has been promoted by governments and cement companies for its positive ...impacts on household socioeconomic status and gender inequalities. But we know little else about how different communities are participating in house transformation. In this paper, I study the embodied and affective dimensions of house transformation in Himachal Pradesh, India. I argue that house transformation is also the transformation of traditional gender and caste identities into new middle‐class identities which benefits some social groups, like upper‐caste women and Dalit men, but not others like Dalit women along intersectional lines. My work extends literature in infrastructure studies and urban political ecology by highlighting how the materiality of infrastructures interacts with everyday dimensions of difference to reproduce the marginalisation of historically oppressed groups along intersectional lines of class, caste, and gender.
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BFBNIB, DOBA, FZAB, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
According to Huntington, quantitative growth and qualitative change of a new middle class lead to the development of civil institutions and the decline of authoritarian symbols, and majority for ...political changes are supported. The question is that why the process of political changes has not been materialized in spite of this class increase in Saudi Arabia and Iraq? Based on the theory of transition to democracy and the comparative method, findings show that both countries are similar in increasing symbolic features of emerged middle classes, such as the development of higher education, bureaucracy and per capita income. However, due to cultural barriers, the rentier nature of the government, the patronage relationship, and the negative role of the external factor, any role in advancing democratization is excluded from this class, and tactical liberalization from above may lead to revolutionary change if democratic demands are not met, and may cause a general uprising. Political instability and structures imposed by American after the collapse of the Baathist regime are also responsible for dysfunction of this classes in Iraq in the establishment of democracy while Iraq has passed the first process of democratization by the collapse regime of Saddam and entered the second phase of democratic institutional consolidation, yet Saudi Arabia has faced serious barriers in her first phase.
Zusammenfassung
Der Beitrag befasst sich mit der u. a. von Andreas Reckwitz formulierten These, dass die deutsche Sozialstruktur zunehmend durch eine räumliche Polarisierung geprägt wird. Empirisch ...untersucht werden auf der Basis des Mikrozensus erstens Veränderungen der sozioökonomischen Zusammensetzung von Metropolen und kleinstädtischen/ländlichen Orten sowie zweitens Veränderungen der Wohnstandorte unterschiedlicher sozioökonomischer Klassen zwischen 1996 und 2018. Die These, dass die „neue“ postindustrielle Mittelklasse sich zunehmend in den Metropolen konzentriert, während die „alte“ Mittelklasse und prekäre Soziallagen immer mehr im kleinstädtischen und ländlichen Raum zurückbleiben, wird nicht bestätigt, jedoch zeigen sich teilweise zunehmende räumliche Disparitäten.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, ODKLJ, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
This paper examines the new styles of houses under construction in contemporary Tanzania and suggests that they can be understood as the material manifestation of middle class growth. Through an ...examination of the architecture, interior decor and compound space in a sample of these new houses in urban Dar es Salaam and rural Kilimanjaro, the paper identifies four domestic aesthetics: the respectable house, the locally aspirant house, the globally aspirant house and the minimalist house, each of which map on to ideas about ujamaa, liberalisation and the consumption of global consumer goods in distinct ways. The paper argues that these different domestic aesthetics demonstrate intra-class differences, and in particular the emergence of a new middle class.
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BFBNIB, CEKLJ, INZLJ, NMLJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK, ZRSKP
Der Artikel geht, auf der Basis der Bevölkerungsumfrage der Sozialwissenschaften (ALLBUS) aus dem Jahr 2016, den Fragen nach, welche sozialen Schichten besonders stark zur Wahl der „Alternative für ...Deutschland“ (AfD) neigen und durch welche subjektiven Einstellungen diese Schichtunterschiede erklärt werden können. Hierfür wird ein Schichtmodell verwendet, das sich an gegenwartsdiagnostischen Überlegungen von Andreas Reckwitz orientiert. Dieses Schichtmodell sieht nicht nur eine vertikale ökonomische Gliederung der Bevölkerung vor, sondern unterteilt die große Mittelschicht zusätzlich anhand der verfügbaren kulturellen Ressourcen in eine neue Mittelschicht und eine alte Mittelschicht. Obgleich eine solche Mittelschichtsdifferenzierung für die Verortung der AfD-Wählerschaft von besonderer Bedeutung ist, wurde sie in der bisherigen Forschung kaum systematisch berücksichtigt. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Unterschicht die stärkste Neigung zur AfD aufweist und auch die alte Mittelschicht stark zu dieser Partei tendiert. Demgegenüber ist die AfD-Präferenz der neuen Mittelschicht und der Oberschicht nur schwach ausgeprägt. Darüber hinaus zeigt sich, dass Einstellungen zu kulturellen und materiellen Aspekten in unterschiedlichem Maß relevant für die Erklärung dieser Schichtunterschiede sind, je nachdem welche Schicht betrachtet wird: Während für die erhöhte AfD-Präferenz der alten Mittelschicht vor allem kulturelle Einstellungen zu Migration und Islam von Bedeutung sind und materielle Einstellungen kaum eine Rolle spielen, sind für die besonders starke AfD-Präferenz der Unterschicht sowohl kulturelle als auch materielle Einstellungen relevant.
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