We have never been middle class
Book - 2019
"Taking apart the ideology of the "middle class" Tidings of a shrinking middle class in one part of the world and its expansion in another absorb our attention, but seldom do we question the category itself. We Have Never Been Middle Class proposes that the middle class is an ideology. Tracing this ideology up to the age of financialization, it exposes the fallacy in the belief that we can all ascend or descend as a result of our aspirational and precautionary investments in property and education. Ethnographic accounts from Germany, Israel, the USA and elsewhere illustrate how this belief orients us, in our private lives as much as in our politics, toward accumulation-enhancing yet self-undermining goals. This original meshi...ng of anthropology and critical theory elucidates capitalism by way of its archetypal actors."
- Subjects
- Published
-
London ; Brooklyn, NY :
Verso
2019.
- Language
- English
- Main Author
- Physical Description
- x, 166 pages ; 22 cm
- Bibliography
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- ISBN
- 9781788733915
- Introduction: We have never been middle class
- 1. What we talk about when we talk about the middle class
- 2. The discreet charm of property
- 3. All too human
- 4. Goodbye, values; so long, politics
- Conclusion.