The pleasures and anxieties of being in the middle: Emerging middle-class identities in Urban South India

Modern Asian Studies

Volumn 46, Issue 3, 2012, Pages 559-599

  Dickey, Sara ^a  

^a BOWDOIN COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CLASS; CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK; CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY; CULTURAL IDENTITY; CULTURAL LANDSCAPE; CULTURAL RELATIONS; SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS; URBAN GEOGRAPHY; URBAN SOCIETY;

INDIA; MADURAI; TAMIL NADU;

EID: 84859524438     PISSN: 0026749X     EISSN: 14698099     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X11000333     Document Type: Review

References (119)

1. Sonalde Desai, 'The Middle Class', in Kaushik Basu, ed., The Oxford Companion to Economics in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 345-347 at p. 345.
2. Satish Deshpande, Contemporary India: A Sociological View (New Delhi: Penguin, 2003);
3. Leela Fernandes and Patrick Heller, 'Hegemonic Aspirations: New Middle Class Politics and India's Democracy in Comparative Perspective', Critical Asian Studies 38, 4: 495-522 (2006).
4. Sherry Ortner, New Jersey Dreaming: Capital, Culture, and the Class of '58 (Durham, North Carolina: Duke, 2003), pp. 13-14.
5. Ronald Herring and Rina Agarwala, 'Introduction', Critical Asian Studies 38, 4: 323-356 (2006), p. 325. (Pubitemid 46994817)
6. Pierre Bourdieu, 'The Forms of Capital', in John G. Richardson, ed., Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, 1986);
7. Ortner, New Jersey Dreaming.
8. See, for example, Minna Säävälä, 'Low Caste but Middle-Class: Some Religious Strategies for Middle-Class Identification in Hyderabad', Contributions to Indian Sociology (n.s.) 35, 3: 293-318 (2006), p. 303. (Pubitemid 34455504)
9. Herring and Agarwala, 'Introduction', p. 347.
10. See especially Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of 'Sex' (New York: Routledge, 1993).
11. For example, Victor Turner, 'Liminality and the Performative Genres', in John J. MacAloon, ed., Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle (Philadelphia: ISHI, 1984), pp. 19-41.
12. See also Louisa Schein, 'Performing Modernity', Cultural Anthropology 14, 3: 361-395 (2006).
13. See especially Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Revised Edition (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1959), pp. 19, 56, 252-253.
14. Examples include Rachel Dwyer, All You Want Is Money, All You Need Is Love: Sexuality and Romance in Modern India (New York: Cassell, 2000);
15. Deshpande, Contemporary India;
16. Steve Derné, 'Globalization and the Making of a Transnational Middle Class: Implications for Class Analysis', in Richard P. Applebaum and William I. Robinson, eds, Critical Globalization Studies (New York: Routledge, 2005), pp. 177-186;
17. Leela Fernandes, India's New Middle Class (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2006);
18. Leela Fernandes and Patrick Heller, 'Hegemonic Aspirations: New Middle Class Politics and India's Democracy in Comparative Perspective', Critical Asian Studies 38, 4: 495-522 (2006);
19. John Harriss, 'Middle-Class Activism and the Politics of the Informal Working Class: A Perspective on Class Relations and Civil Society in Indian Cities', Critical Asian Studies 38, 4: 445-465 (2006); (Pubitemid 46994821)
20. C. J. Fuller and Haripriya Narasimhan, 'Information Technology Professionals and the New-Rich Middle Class in Chennai (Madras)', Modern Asian Studies 41, 1: 121-150 (2007). (Pubitemid 44911595)
21. Examples of those that do so include Rajni Kothari, Poverty: Human Consciousness and the Development of Amnesia (Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Zed, 1995);
22. Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen, India: Development and Participation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002);
23. Anjan Chakrabarti and Stephen Cullenberg, Transition and Development in India (New York: Routledge, 2003);
24. Desai, 'Middle Class';
25. Barbara Harriss-White and Anushree Sinha, eds, Trade Liberalization and India's Informal Economy (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007).
26. Leela Fernandes, 'Restructuring the New Middle Class in Liberalizing India', Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East XX, 1 & 2: 88-104 (2000);
27. Fernandes, New Middle Class;
28. Timothy J. Scrase, 'Television, the Middle Classes and the Transformation of Cultural Identities in West Bengal, India', International Communication Gazette 64, 4: 323-342 (2002);
29. Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase, 'Paradoxes of Globalization, Liberalization, and Gender Equality', Gender & Society 17, 4: 544-566 (2003);
30. Margit van Wessel, 'Talking about Consumption: How an Indian Middle Class Dissociates from Middle-Class Life', Cultural Dynamics 16, 1: 93-116 (2004); (Pubitemid 38861186)
31. Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase and Timothy J. Scrase, 'Hegemony, Globalisation, and Neoliberalism: The Case of West Bengal, India', in Richard Howson and Kylie Smith, eds, Hegemony: Studies in Consensus and Coercion (New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 184-200.
32. World Bank, 'India at aGlance', http://devdata.worldbank.org/AAG/ind-aag. pdf (2008) [accessed 20 April 2011];
33. World Bank, 'India, Development Indicators', http://ddp-ext.worldbank. org/ext/ddpreports/ViewSharedReport?REPORT-ID =9147&REQUEST-TYPE= VIEWADVANCED&WSP=N&HF=N/CPProfile.asp (2008) [20 April 2011].
34. See Leela Fernandes, 'Nationalizing "The Global": Media Images, Cultural Politics and the Middle Class in India', Media, Culture & Society 22, 5: 611-628 (2000);
35. Fernandes, 'Restructuring';
36. Salim Lakha, 'The State, Globalisation and Indian Middle-Class Identity', inMichael Pinches, ed., Culture and Privilege in Capitalist Asia (New York: Routledge, 1999).
37. Jayati Ghosh, 'Gender Concerns in Macro-Economic Policy', Economic and Political Weekly 29, 18: WS-2-WS-4 (30 April 1994);
38. Kothari, Poverty;
39. Fernandes, 'Restructuring';
40. Desai, 'Middle Class';
41. Ganguly-Scrase and Scrase, 'Hegemony'.
42. Desai, 'Middle Class', p. 346
43. For example, Achin Vanaik, 'Consumerism and New Classes in India', in Sujata Patel, Jasodhara Bagchi, and Krishna Raj, eds, Thinking Social Science in India: Essays in Honour of Alice Thorner (New Delhi: Sage, 2002), pp. 227-235 at p. 228;
44. Deshpande, Contemporary India, p. 134;
45. William Mazzarella, Shoveling Smoke: Advertising and Globalization in Contemporary India (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2003), pp. 264-265.
46. see Desai, 'Middle Class', p. 345;
47. Deshpande, Contemporary India, pp. 132-133;
48. E. Sridharan, 'The Growth and Sectoral Composition of India's Middle Class: Its Impact on the Politics of Economic Liberalization', India Review 3, 4: 405-428 (2004).
49. Harriss, 'Middle-Class Activism', p. 447.
50. Sara Dickey, 'Permeable Homes: Domestic Service, Household Space and the Vulnerability of Class Boundaries in Urban India', American Ethnologist 27, 2: 462-489 (2000), p. 466.
51. Nicholas Nisbett, 'Friendship, Consumption, Morality: Practising Identity, Negotiating Hierarchy in Middle-Class Bangalore', Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (n.s.), 13, 4: 935-950 [2007], p. 947
52. For example, Deshpande, Contemporary India;
53. Desai, 'Middle Class'.
54. Sonalde Desai and Veena Kulkarni, 'Changing Educational Inequalities in India in the Context of Affirmative Action', Demography 45, 2: 245-270 (2008).
55. Sonalde Desai, 'Caste in 21st Century India: Competing Narratives' (n.d.), unpublished ms. in author's possession.
56. C. J. Fuller and Haripriya Narasimhan, 'Information Technology Professionals' and 'From Landlords to Software Engineers: Migration and Urbanization among Tamil Brahmins', Comparative Studies in Society and History 50, 1: 170-196 (2008).
57. See for example Harriss, 'Middle-Class Activism', pp. 248-249.
58. Fuller and Narasimhan, 'Information Technology Professionals' and 'Landlords to Software Engineers'.
59. See Dickey, 'Permeable Homes', for examples.
60. C. J. Fuller, 'Introduction: Caste Today', in C. J. Fuller, ed., Caste Today (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 1-31 at pp. 16-17.
61. Mary Hancock, Womanhood in the Making: Domestic Ritual & Public Culture in Urban South India [Boulder, Colorado: Westview, 1999], p. 46).
62. Säävälä, 'Low Caste', pp. 302-303
63. See Laura Ring, Zenana: Everyday Peace in a Karachi Apartment Building (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), pp. 83-85.
64. Sara Dickey, 'Still "One Man in a Thousand"', in David Blamey and Robert E. D'Souza, eds, Living Pictures: Perspectives on the Film Poster in India (London: Open Editions), pp. 69-78 at pp. 76-77.
65. See also Hancock, Womanhood;
66. Ann Waldrop, 'Gating and Class Relations: The Case of a New Delhi "Colony"', City & Society 16, 2: 93-116 (2004), p. 97; (Pubitemid 40067744)
67. Harriss, 'Middle-Class Activism', p. 458;
68. A. R. Venkatachalapathy, In Those Days There Was No Coffee: Writings in Cultural History (New Delhi: Yoda, 2006).
69. Fernandes, 'Restructuring;
70. Deshpande, Contemporary India, p. 130.
71. Purnima Mankekar, Screening Culture, Viewing Politics: An Ethnography of Television, Womanhood, and Nation in Postcolonial India (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1999), p. 48.
72. Arvind Rajagopal, 'Thinking About the New Indian Middle Class: Gender, Advertising and Politics in anAge of Globalisation', inRaji Sunder Rajan, ed., Signposts: Gender Issues in Post-Independence India (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2001), pp. 57-99 at p. 73.
73. See also Tulasi Srinivas, 'Flush with Success: Bathing, Defecation, Worship, and Social Change in South India', Space and Culture 5, 4: 368-386 (2002);
74. Mark Liechty, Suitably Modern: Making Middle-Class Culture in a New Consumer Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), pp. 140-145.
75. Säävälä, 'Low Caste', p. 303.
76. See Säävälä, 'Low Caste
77. Francis Bloch, Vijayendra Rao, and Sonalde Desai, 'Wedding Celebrations as ConspicuousConsumption: Signaling Social Status in Rural India', The Journal of Human Resources XXXIX, 3: 675-695 (2004). (Pubitemid 39379338)
78. See Liechty, Suitably Modern;
79. van Wessel, 'Talking about Consumption'.
80. Dennis McGilvray, Symbolic Heat:Gender, Health&Worship among the Tamils of South India and Sri Lanka (Middletown, New Jersey: Grantha, 1998).
81. See Rachel Tolen, 'Transfers of Knowledge and Privileged Spheres of Practice: Servants and Employers in a Madras Railway Colony', in Kathleen M. Adams and Sara Dickey, eds, Home and Hegemony: Domestic Service and Identity Politics in South and Southeast Asia (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2000), pp. 63-86 at pp. 70-71
82. Tolen, 'Transfers of Knowledge', p. 80.
83. See Liechty, Suitably Modern.
84. Paul Greenough, 'Nation, Economy and Tradition Displayed: The Crafts Museum, New Delhi' in Carol A. Breckenridge, ed., Consuming Modernity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1995), pp. 216-248 at p. 221;
85. Mukulika Banerjee and Daniel Miller, The Sari (Oxford: Berg, 2003);
86. Liechty, Suitably Modern, p. 99;
87. Mytheli Srinivasan, 'Emotion, Identity, and the Female Subject: Tamil Women's Magazines in Colonial India, 1890-1940', Journal of Women's History 14, 4: 59-82 (2003);
88. Venkatachalapathy, In Those Days;
89. Abigail McGowan, Crafting the Nation in Colonial India (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
90. Government of India, Census of India 2001, 'Housing Profile, Tamil Nadu' (2003), www.censusIndia.gov.in/Census-Data-2001/States-at-glance/State-Links/33- tn.pdf [accessed 15 June 2011].
91. See van Wessel, 'Talking aboutConsumption', p. 114
92. See also Bloch, Rao, and Desai, 'Wedding Celebrations', p. 677.
93. See Sara Dickey, 'Anjali's Alliance: Class Mobility in Urban India', in Diane P. Mines and Sarah Lamb, eds, Everyday Life in South Asia, Second Edition (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), pp. 303-324
94. see for example Karin Kapadia, Siva and Her Sisters [Boulder: Westview, 1995], Chapter 3)-indicates that it is increasingly important.
95. Melanie A. Dean, 'The Modern Eye: Reversals in Evil Eye Prophylactic Form and Function in Contemporary Tamil Nadu, India' (n.d.), unpublishedms. in author's possession;
96. Dwyer, All You Want;
97. Fernandes, New Middle Class;
98. Liechty, Suitably Modern;
99. Mankekar, Screening Culture.
100. Fuller and Narasimhan, 'Information Technology Professionals'.
101. Goffman, Presentation of Self, p. 56.
102. Lindy Warrell, 'Conflict and Hierarchy: Jealousy among the Sinhalese Buddhists', South Asia XIII, 1: 19-41 (1990);
103. David Pocock, 'The Evil Eye', in T. N. Madan, ed., Religion in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 50-62;
104. Bambi Chapin, 'Mobilizing Envy: Sinhala Models of Emotion and Relationships in Conflict' (n.d.), unpublished ms. in author's possession;
105. Dean, 'Modern Eye'.
106. Pocock, 'Evil Eye', pp. 52-53;
107. Chapin, 'Mobilizing Envy'.
108. Dean, 'Modern Eye'
109. International Institute for Population Sciences, National Family Health Survey (MCH and Family Planning), India 1992-93 [Bombay: IIPS, 1995], p. 49
110. For a more extensive discussion of Anjali's upward mobility, see Dickey, 'Anjali's Alliance'.
111. Herring and Agarwala, 'Introduction', p. 325.
112. Ian Hacking, 'Between Michel Foucault and Erving Goffman: Between Discourse in the Abstract and Face-to-Face Interaction', Economy and Society 33, 3: 277-302 (2004), at p. 299. (Pubitemid 39159849)
113. See Säävälä, 'Low Caste'
114. See for example, Deshpande, Contemporary India pp. 129, 139-142;
115. Leela Fernandes, 'The Politics of Forgetting: Class Politics, State Power and the Restructuring of Urban Space in India', Urban Studies 41, 12: 2415-2430 (2004), p. 2418; (Pubitemid 39500590)
116. Fernandes and Heller, 'Hegemonic Aspirations', p. 501.
117. Fernandes and Heller, 'Hegemonic Aspirations', p. 496.
118. Ganguly-Scrase and Scrase, 'Hegemony', p. 196.
119. Hacking, 'Between Michel Foucault', p. 280.