Middle-Classes or Middle-Income Milieus? a Culture-Based Alternative Approach to Middle Strata in the Global South

For decades, social scientists and economists examined “middle-classes,” mainly in Europe and North America. In the last decade began a new discussion about rising “global” and “new” “middle-classes” in Asia, South America and Africa. I suggest speaking instead of “middle-classes” of economic “middle-strata” as the groups are defined mostly by income and not by complex multi-dimensional class concepts.

This contribution suggests that it is only under certain conditions appropriate to speak of “middle-classes” and introduces as an alternative to studies in the Global South the milieu concept. Authors such as Marx and Weber established in the late 19^th and early 20^th-century “class” for the study of vertically stratified European societies. The concept of social classes implies that there is a group in a distinctive income stratum that shares crucial characteristics such as occupation, income situation, consciousness, economic interests, and status.

While class studies construct groups by structural factors such as similar occupations and income, milieu approaches identify groups according to specific sociocultural features such as common mentalities, consumption patterns, and leisure activities. Different basic orientations in life, values, and specific activities show significant characteristics of groups that do not necessarily overlap with vertical stratification. For instance, it is often possible to distinguish religious from hedonistic, secular milieus and social climbers from established milieus in middle-income strata. While milieu research examines in a first step cultural characteristics, it can consider in a second step if milieus fall together with vertical positions of income and occupations.

Examples from own research on middle-income milieus in Recife/Brazil and Nairobi/Kenya illustrate how the milieu concept can describe an almost paradigmatic case of vertical differentiation (Recife) and a highly complex milieu differentiation with many horizontal/cross-cutting influences (Nairobi).