Contested Capital: Rural Middle Classes in India
Cambridge University Press, 12/3/2020
EAN 9781108836333, ISBN10: 110883633X
Hardcover, 322 pages, 22.9 x 15.9 x 2.5 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
The expansion and transformation of Asian economies is producing class structures, roles and identities that could not easily be predicted from other times and places. The industrialisation of the countryside, in particular, generates new, rural middle classes which straddle the worlds of agriculture and industry in complex ways. Their class position is improvised on the basis of numerous influences and opportunities, and is in constant evolution. Enormous though its total population is, meanwhile, the rural middle class remains invisible to most scholars and policymakers. Contested Capital is the first major work to shed light on an emerging transnational class comprised of many hundreds of millions of people. In India, the 'middle class' has become one of the key categories of economic analysis and developmental forecasting. The discussion suffers from one major oversight: it assumes that the middle class resides uniquely in the cities. As this book demonstrates, however, more than a third of India's middle class is rural, and 17 per cent of rural households belong to the middle class. The book brings this vast and dynamic population into view, so confronting some of the most crucial neglected questions of the contemporary global economy.
List of figures and maps
List of tables
List of abbreviations
Foreword Barbara Harriss-White
Acknowledgments
Introduction. The problem of the 'rural middle class(es)'
1. Trajectory of the Indian middle class
its size and geographical variations
2. In search of the rural middle classes
from village stratification to rural household variations
3. Marx
capital, labour and the rural middle classes
4. Weber
marketable capital, status and the rural middle classes
5. Bourdieu
cultural capital, self-perception and the middle-class identity in rural India
Conclusion. Understanding the rural middle classes
Appendices
References
Index.