Download or read book Latin America s Emerging Middle Classes written by J. Dayton-Johnson and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-01-27 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Politicians, business leaders and citizens look with hope to the Latin American middle class for political stability and purchasing power, but the economic position of the middle class remains vulnerable. The contributors document the remarkable emergence of this middle group in Latin America, whose measurement turns out not to be an easy task.
Download or read book Latin America s Middle Class written by David Stuart Parker and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2013 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As middle classes in developing countries grow in size and political power, do they foster stable democracies and prosperous, innovative economies? Or do they encourage crass materialism, bureaucratic corruption, unrealistic social demands, and ideological polarization? These questions have taken on a new urgency in recent years but they are not new, having first appeared in the mid twentieth century in debates about Latin America. At a moment when exploding middle classes in the global South increasingly capture the world's attention, these Latin American classics are ripe for revisiting. Part One of the book introduces key debates from the 1950s and 1960s, when Cold War era scholars questioned whether or not the middle class would be a force for democracy and development, to safeguard Latin America against the perceived challenge of Revolutionary Cuba. While historian John J. Johnson placed tentative faith in the positive transformative power of the "middle sectors," others were skeptical. The striking disagreements that emerge from these texts lend themselves to discussion about the definition, character, and complexity of the middle classes, and about the assumptions that underpinned twentieth-century modernization theory. Part Two brings together more recent case studies from Mexico, Peru, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, and Argentina, written by scholars influenced by contemporary trends in social and cultural history. These authors highlight issues of language, identity, gender, and the multiple faces and forms of power. Their studies bring flesh-and-blood Latin Americans to the forefront, reconstructing the daily lives of underpaid office workers, harried housewives and striving professionals, in order to revisit questions that the authors in Part One tended to approach abstractly. They also pay attention to changing cultural understandings and political constructions of who "the middle class" is and what it means to be middle class. Designed with the classroom and non-specialist reader in mind, the book has a comprehensive critical introduction, and each selection is preceded by a short description setting the context and introducing key themes.
Download or read book The Middle Classes in Latin America written by Mario Barbosa Cruz and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-07-13 with total page 604 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a collective effort, this volume locates the formation of the middle classes at the core of the histories of Latin America in the last two centuries. Featuring scholars from different places across the Americas, it is an interdisciplinary contribution to the world histories of the middle classes, histories of Latin America, and intersectional studies. It also engages a larger audience about the importance of the middle classes to understand modernity, democracy, neoliberalism, and decoloniality. By including research produced from a variety of Latin American, North American, and other audiences, the volume incorporates trends in social history, cultural studies and discursive theory. It situates analytical categories of race and gender at the core of class formation. This volume seeks to initiate a critical and global conversation concerning the ways in which the analysis of the middle classes provides crucial re-readings of how Latin America, as a region, has historically been understood.
Download or read book Contemporary Middle Class in Latin America written by Omar Pereyra and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2014-11-20 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the last decades, the Latin American middle class is growing in size while becoming more heterogeneous. Sustained economic growth explains its increasing size, but behind its heterogeneity there is not only the diversification of lifestyles, but also the crystallization of a large process of upward social mobility of second and third generation migrants to capital cities and their incorporation into middle-class positions. In the last decades, these individuals are now part of the different spheres of socialization formerly occupied by the traditional middle class: private schools, college and universities, middle-class jobs and occupations, and traditional middle-class neighborhoods. To explore the genesis of this phenomenon and its consequences, the author studies Residential San Felipe, a quintessential traditional middle-class neighborhood in Lima, Peru, which is currently receiving an important influx of upwardly mobile families. The case of San Felipe shows that inside the contemporary middle class a strong boundary between the “traditional middle class” and the “new middle class” permeates the everyday life of the neighborhood. However, though this difference between the “traditional” and “new middle class” is recognized by all residents of San Felipe, its relevance as well as the elements at the basis of this distinction varies.
Download or read book Economic Mobility and the Rise of the Latin American Middle Class written by Francisco H. G. Ferreira and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2012-11-09 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After decades of stagnation, the size of Latin America's middle class recently expanded to the point where, for the first time ever, the number of people in poverty is equal to the size of the middle class. This volume investigates the nature, determinants and possible consequences of this remarkable process of social transformation. We propose an original definition of the middle class, tailor-made for Latin America, centered on the concept of economic security and thus a low probability of falling into poverty. Given our definition of the middle class, there are four, not three, classes in Latin America. Sandwiched between the poor and the middle class there lies a large group of people who appear to make ends meet well enough, but do not enjoy the economic security that would be required for membership of the middle class. We call this group the 'vulnerable'. In an almost mechanical sense, these transformations in Latin America reflect both economic growth and declining inequality in over the period. We adopt a measure of mobility that decomposes the 'gainers' and 'losers' in society by social class of each household. The continent has experienced a large amount of churning over the last 15 years, at least 43% of all Latin Americans changed social classes between the mid 1990s and the end of the 2000s. Despite the upward mobility trend, intergenerational mobility, a better proxy for inequality of opportunity, remains stagnant. Educational achievement and attainment remain to be strongly dependent upon parental education levels. Despite the recent growth in pro-poor programs, the middle class has benefited disproportionally from social security transfers and are increasingly opting out from government services. Central to the region's prospects of continued progress will be its ability to harness the new middle class into a new, more inclusive social contract, where the better-off pay their fair share of taxes, and demand improved public services.
Download or read book The Middle Class in World Society written by Christian Suter and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2020-05-21 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume delves into the study of the world’s emerging middle class. With essays on Europe, the United States, Africa, Latin America, and Asia, the book studies recent trends and developments in middle class evolution at the global, regional, national, and local levels. It reconsiders the conceptualization of the middle class, with a focus on the diversity of middle class formation in different regions and zones of world society. It also explores middle class lifestyles and everyday experiences, including experiences of social mobility, feelings of insecurity and anxiety, and even middle class engagement with social activism. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and in-depth interviews, the book provides a sophisticated analysis of this new and rapidly expanding socioeconomic group and puts forth some provocative ideas for intellectual and policy debates. It will be of importance to students and researchers of sociology, economics, development studies, political studies, Latin American studies, and Asian Studies.
Download or read book Generation Unbound written by Isabel V. Sawhill and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2014-09-25 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over half of all births to young adults in the United States now occur outside of marriage, and many are unplanned. The result is increased poverty and inequality for children. The left argues for more social support for unmarried parents; the right argues for a return to traditional marriage. In Generation Unbound, Isabel V. Sawhill offers a third approach: change "drifters" into "planners." In a well-written and accessible survey of the impact of family structure on child well-being, Sawhill contrasts "planners," who are delaying parenthood until after they marry, with "drifters," who are having unplanned children early and outside of marriage. These two distinct patterns are contributing to an emerging class divide and threatening social mobility in the United States. Sawhill draws on insights from the new field of behavioral economics, showing that it is possible, by changing the default, to move from a culture that accepts a high number of unplanned pregnancies to a culture in which adults only have children when they are ready to be a parent.
Download or read book China s Emerging Middle Class written by Cheng Li and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Decades ago, there was no distinct middle class in the People's Republic of China. Any meaningful discussion of China's economy, politics, or society must take into account the rapid emergence and explosive growth of the Chinese middle class. This book details the origins and characteristics of this dramatic change.
Download or read book Reforming Chile written by Patrick Barr-Melej and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2002-11-25 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Highlighting the crucial yet largely overlooked role played by society's middle layers in the historical development of Latin America, Patrick Barr-Melej provides the first comprehensive analysis of the rise of Chile's middle-class reform movement and its profound impact on that country's cultural and political landscapes. He shows how a diverse collection of middle-class intellectuals, writers, politicians, educators, and bureaucrats forged a "progressive" nationalism and advanced an ambitious cultural-political project between the 1890s and 1940s. Together, reformers challenged the power of elite groups and sought to quell working-class revolutionary activism as they endeavored to democratize culture and fortify liberal democracy. Using sources that range from archival documents and newspapers to short stories, novels, and school textbooks, Barr-Melej examines the reform movement's cultural ideas and their political applications, especially as they were articulated in the areas of literature and public education. In the process, he provides a new framework for understanding Chile's cultural and political evolution, as well as the complicated place of the middle class in a society experiencing the swift changes inherent in capitalist modernization.
Download or read book Latin American Economic Outlook 2011 How Middle Class Is Latin America written by OECD and published by OECD Publishing. This book was released on 2010-12-03 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This year's Latin American Economic Outlook includes a macroeconomic overview of the ongoing economic recovery from the global financial crisis as well as an in-depth report on the middle class in Latin America.
Download or read book Waking from the Dream written by Louise E. Walker and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-20 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the postwar boom began to dissipate in the late 1960s, Mexico's middle classes awoke to a new, economically terrifying world. And following massacres of students at peaceful protests in 1968 and 1971, one-party control of Mexican politics dissipated as well. The ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party struggled to recover its legitimacy, but instead saw its support begin to erode. In the following decades, Mexico's middle classes ended up shaping the history of economic and political crisis, facilitating the emergence of neo-liberalism and the transition to democracy. Waking from the Dream tells the story of this profound change from state-led development to neo-liberalism, and from a one-party state to electoral democracy. It describes the fraught history of these tectonic shifts, as politicians and citizens experimented with different strategies to end a series of crises. In the first study to dig deeply into the drama of the middle classes in this period, Walker shows how the most consequential struggles over Mexico's economy and political system occurred between the middle classes and the ruling party.
Download or read book Makers of Democracy written by A. Ricardo López-Pedreros and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-28 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Makers of Democracy A. Ricardo López-Pedreros traces the ways in which a thriving middle class was understood to be a foundational marker of democracy in Colombia during the second half of the twentieth century. Drawing on a wide array of sources ranging from training manuals and oral histories to school and business archives, López-Pedreros shows how the Colombian middle class created a model of democracy based on free-market ideologies, private property rights, material inequality, and an emphasis on a masculine work culture. This model, which naturalized class and gender hierarchies, provided the groundwork for Colombia's later adoption of neoliberalism and inspired the emergence of alternate models of democracy and social hierarchies in the 1960s and 1970s that helped foment political radicalization. By highlighting the contested relationships between class, gender, economics, and politics, López-Pedreros theorizes democracy as a historically unstable practice that exacerbated multiple forms of domination, thereby prompting a rethinking of the formation of democracies throughout the Americas.
Download or read book Fair Growth written by Nancy Birdsall and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Presents 'tools' to make life in Latin America more equitable and fair for the majority. Suggests policies and programs for making tax structures more progressive; giving small businesses a chance; protecting labor mobility and workers' rights; tackling corruption; and raising levels of quality, efficiency, and equity of the education systems"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book The Middle Class in Emerging Societies written by Leslie L. Marsh and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-23 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines the discursive construction of the meanings and lifestyle practices of the middle class in the rapidly transforming economies of Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East, focusing on the social, political and cultural implications at local and global levels. While drawing a comparative analysis of what it means to be middle class in these different locations, the essays offer a connective understanding of the middle class phenomenon in emerging market economies and lay the groundwork for future research on emerging, transitional societies. The book addresses three key dimensions: the discursive creation of the middle class, the construction of the cultural identity through consumption practices and lifestyle choices, and the social, political and cultural consequences related to globalization and neoliberalism.
Download or read book The New Black Middle Class in South Africa written by Roger Southall and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2016 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides the most comprehensive account since the early 1960s of South Africa's black middle class.
Download or read book Discipline and Development written by Diane E. Davis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-03-22 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perhaps the most commonly held assumption in the field of development is that middle classes are the bounty of economic modernization and growth. As countries gradually transcend their agrarian past and become urbanized and industrialized, so the logic goes, middle classes emerge and gain in number, complexity, cultural influence, social prominence, and political authority. Yet this is only half the story. Middle classes shape industrial and economic development, they are not merely its product; the particular ways in which middle classes shape themselves - and the ways historical conditions shape them - influence development trajectories in multiple ways. This is the story of South Korea's and Taiwan's economic successes and Argentina's and Mexico's relative 'failures' through an examination of their rural middle classes and disciplinary capacities. Can disciplining continue in a context where globalization squeezes middle classes and frees capitalists from the state and social contracts in which they have been embedded?
Download or read book The New Latin America written by Fernando Calderón and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Latin America has experienced a profound transformation in the first two decades of the 21st century: it has been fully incorporated into the global economy, while excluding regions and populations devalued by the logic of capitalism. Technological modernization has gone hand-in-hand with the reshaping of old identities and the emergence of new ones. The transformation of Latin America has been shaped by social movements and political conflicts. The neoliberal model that dominated the first stage of the transformation induced widespread inequality and poverty, and triggered social explosions that led to its own collapse. A new model, neo-developmentalism, emerged from these crises as national populist movements were elected to government in several countries. The more the state intervened in the economy, the more it became vulnerable to corruption, until the rampant criminal economy came to penetrate state institutions. Upper middle classes defending their privileges and citizens indignant because of corruption of the political elites revolted against the new regimes, undermining the model of neo-developmentalism. In the midst of political disaffection and public despair, new social movements, women, youth, indigenous people, workers, peasants, opened up avenues of hope against the background of darkness invading the continent. This book, written by two leading scholars of Latin America, provides a comprehensive and up-do-date account of the new Latin America that is in the process of taking shape today. It will be an indispensable text for students and scholars in Latin American Studies, sociology, politics and media and communication studies, and anyone interested in Latin America today.
