479
Biography and ‘Middle Class’ in the Global South
Biography and ‘Middle Class’ in the Global South
Abstract Submissions Closed
Friday, 26 February 2021: 10:45-12:15
Location:
RC38 Biography and Society (host committee)
Language: English
Session Type: Oral
In this session we aim to connect the concept of biography to the recent debate on ‘middle classes’ in the Global South. These discussions consider, to varying degrees and with different focuses, typical forms of capital and their accumulation, typical forms of lifestyle, and phenomena of group formations in the ‘new’ middle strata of societies in the Global South. However, the discussions sometimes suffer from the difficulty of applying concepts which were drawn-up for the analysis of societies in the Global North. In our opinion, the concept of biography and the analysis of biographies are likely to enrich the debate as they enable to trace similarities and differences of class or similar forms of belonging with a ‘bottom-up’ perspective. Biographical research looks at social processes through the perspectives and experiences of actors. Pursued as multigenerational research it analyses processes of intergenerational transmission and reciprocity as well as the changes of family networks. As such it cuts across the investigation of ‘middle class’ and allows for a critical engagement with existing categorisations. For example, biography helps to address the ‘problem’ of contradictory class characteristics and the issue of movement between and through different classes.
Contributions might deal with, but are not limited to, the following aspects:
- Biographical trajectories of ascending into and descending from intermediate or ’middle classes’
- Experiencing and negotiating casualization of class belonging
- Biographical experiences of class differences and inequalities
- Different milieus within ‘middle classes’
- Migration and ‘middle classes’
Session Organizers: