The text below was produced by Suzanne Hocknell from notes she made during the wide-ranging discussion of the three texts. The conversation included most of the SCARF Ethics projects UK based team-members and draws on their words, all errors in representation are, however, entirely her own:

Who are the new middle-classes?
The middle-class categorisation is a very diverse one. At its most basic it includes those that are neither the poorest nor the richest in any society, a range that tends to situate them within households where at least one member has a job requiring both professional qualifications and limited amounts of manual labour. In many countries though this covers a vast swath of the population, exactly where people sit within the range of middle-class sub-strata depends on an ill-defined combination of status markers, including disposable income, cultural capital, living standards measures and home district. A distinguishing element that emerges when thinking about the new middle-classes, however, is precarity across one or more of the status markers.

The new middle-classes may have more consumption power than traditional working-classes, but also more precarity in the workplace. A vulnerability which is often compounded by them also lacking the soft power of cultural capital held by the traditional middle-classes. If such insecurity is a key marker of this group, this then raises questions as to whether they are indeed a new class, or a moment in a set of processes of modernity in which subjects are constructed in ways that are different to classic class analysis. If the building blocks of middle-classness are mutable, what work do these co-constructions do? Qualitative interviews with those with social, cultural and political power will help us explore whether the new middle-classes are in fact a new iteration of working-class, and if so who does it benefit to categorise them as middle-class? Key questions here include, do constructions of the new-middle classes as consumers have a depoliticising effect, or is politics coming through in different ways? And if so, what are the implications of the construction of the new middle-classes as consumers for the ways in which power, politics and responsibility can be done? For example, does Barnett et al’s argument that in neo-liberal forms of capital, politics is increasingly practiced through the market, hold here. Such questions necessitate in-depth ethnographic work to begin to unpack the senses of self, responsibility and belonging of members of the new middle-classes as they emerge through the lived experiences and consumption practices of situated individuals, as well as their expectations, hopes and concerns for the future. Values which intertwine with constructions of gender, ethnicity, age, conceptualisations of home, and more.

If current purchasing power combined with precarity are key signifiers of the new-middle classes, then an understanding of consumption practices cannot be uncoupled from an exploration of the levers of change. Further, if the category is also always in relation to family, household, community and other social factors, then the influences of the social, cultural and political opportunities, blockages and expectations they engender must also be unpacked. Quantitative work will enable us to zoom out to look at the bigger picture here. When triangulated with an analysis of media communication, this will facilitate us to unpack how, and through what media, this new class is being co-constructed within markers of style, manners or responsibilities that distinguish them from the traditional working-classes. Key questions here are to what extent are these constructions a safety-valve when there are social, cultural and political barriers both to pathways out of precarity and to influencing power, and in what ways do the consumption knowledges, beliefs and practices of the new-middle classes co-construct, subvert, resist or acquiesce to such barriers? In sum, if precarity in economic, social and political capital is what distinguishes the new from the old middle classes, and disposable income is what distinguishes them from the traditional working-classes, how are the new-middle classes made with and through representations of consumption, and how are they making themselves through their practices of consumption? And, given that markers of middle class consumption are often high status goods such as houses, cars, phones and wine, how might understandings of mundane food knowledges and practices help us to unpack all of this?

Comments:
1. From the Brazil Team:
a) About the phrase “The new middle-classes may have more consumption power than traditional working-classes, but also more precarity in the workplace”, it is important to highlight our New Middle Class has been created by a mix of economic development and Government policies/ interest (re-organization of Middle Class criteria, for instance). Saying that, the New Middle Class – who has crossed above the Poverty line (and have recently dropped again due to our current Political and Economical crisis…) – does not have more consumption power than the traditional working-class.

b) In a short period of time (from 2003-2010) the New Middle Class had access to political information and civil rights that historically have never been granted to such parcel of the population. Despite the economic and political crisis that have dramatically changed the ‘economic’ status of this New Middle Class, such access to rights and information had a major impact in how this population see and place (social and politically) themselves.

c) It is important to highlight the close relationship between race and the New Middle Class. Due to our colonial/ slavery history, Poverty in Brazil has a color, and it is mainly black and brown. For instance, 54,9% of Brazilian population is black or brown (Pardo) (IBGE, 2017), but only 17% are among the richest. In addition to that, 76% of the poorest people in Brazil are black (IBGE 2014). Then, it is reasonable to say that the majority of the population that crossed the poverty line to the ‘New Middle Class’ (from 2003-2010) was black and brown. And following our current economic/ political crisis and the rise of unemployment rate to 13,1% (2018), recent data have shown that 64% of the current unemployed population is black (which is strongly associated with the ‘previous’ New Middle Class).