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- Convenors:
-
Seda Yuksel
(University of Vienna)
Volha Biziukova (Brown Univerisity)
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- Chair:
-
Wesam Hassan
(London School of Economics and Political Sciences)
- Discussants:
-
Magdalena Craciun
(University of Bucharest)
Luisa Steur (University of Amsterdam)
- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- Lanyon Building (LAN), 01/002 CR & CC
- Sessions:
- Thursday 28 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel invites empirical, theoretical, and historically informed contributions from different regional research settings to interrogate how the "middle class" can be productively used as an analytical category to understand the complex entanglements between authoritarian and neoliberal contexts.
Long Abstract:
The rising authoritarianism, aggravated social effects of neoliberal restructuring, and waning beliefs in a positive future in recent decades stand in contrast to the hopes of dynamic economic growth, improving wellbeing, and liberalization of political regimes that marked the turn of the century in the emerging economies. These expectations were associated with large-scale (neo) liberal economic restructuring and fostered by economic advancements of the 2000s. While the new middle classes used to be considered as the symbol and key agents of such "'progressive" transformations, their altered relationships with the state since the late 2000s, including entrenching authoritarian regimes, call for revisiting our understanding of middle classes.
This panel invites empirical, theoretical, and historically informed contributions that consider different historical trajectories of the middle classes in concrete regional contexts to investigate the forms of their agency and broader social reproduction. We are particularly interested in the relationships between middle classes and state, especially in how middle classes are shaped through policies and incorporated into (increasingly authoritarian) power regimes which entangle in various ways with neoliberal governance. We also aim to explore how they challenge or actively produce these power regimes and forms of governance.
How can a focus on the dynamic of middle classes shed light on the nexus of variegated neoliberal experiences and authoritarian political regimes? How can we rearticulate the relation between neoliberalism, authoritarianism, and class? How can "middle class" be productively employed as an analytical category in specific contexts (without aiming at a universal definition)?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 28 July, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
This paper adopts a transnational perspective to avoid methodological nationalism that tends to dominate research on the middle class by focusing on the new Chinese middle class as it spreads over the globe to take shelter in unlikely destinations such as Hungary.
Paper long abstract:
Between 2013 and 2017 over 18000 Chinese citizens, mostly mothers with young children took advantage of a golden visa immigration scheme offered by the Hungarian government. Arriving from megacities such as Beijing or Shanghai, these middle-class families chose Budapest despite its lowly ranking in developmental imaginaries of global hierarchy in the hope of securing a mentally and physically healthier environment for their offspring. Taking this path articulates a position that sidesteps or even criticizes the norms and values of contemporary Chinese society by explicitly rejecting the competitive and commodified pursuit of success. These migrants’ aspirations for freer lifestyles and postmaterial values is imbued with contradictions and is often coupled with a “pro-globalisation anti-liberal” stance (Zhang, 2019) that approves of Hungary’s hard-right politics directed against refugees, domestic ethnic minorities, and the poor. These contradictions form a complicated web of ideologies, for the capturing of which child-rearing provides a fecund entry point.
Focusing on one of the most important institutions of the middle class: the family, the proposed research aims to capture the light this qualitatively new type of non-economic migration casts on the harsh social consequences of China’s swift economic development, enacted by its celebrated emerging middle class. The flight of the new Chinese middle-class represents a shift in the long history of how Chinese migrants interact with the world and relate to China as it is reflected in the intimate lives of families: a turn from economic accumulation oriented toward future success to postmaterialist pursuits reorienting emphasis on the presence.
Paper short abstract:
I use the concept "Middle Class", and their subjective perception of risk and chance, as an analytical category to examine my research participants' narratives about their participation in the national lottery (Milli Piyango) in Istanbul.
Paper long abstract:
I use the concept "Middle Class", and their subjective perception of risk and chance, as an analytical category to examine my research participants' narratives about their participation in the national lottery (Milli Piyango) in Istanbul. I aim to understand how do they conceptualize economic opportunities, chance, and the possibility of a good life amidst their turbulent economic and political realities. I argue that examining people's engagement with the concept of luck, chance, and fortune could offer an ethnographic theorization of the ways in which people reckon with and negotiate deterministic views about economic uneasiness, opportunity, chance, and ultimately everyday practices related to their relationship to money and financial decisions. Although participation in the lottery can be considered as an exceptional activity that offers a break from everyday life events, it has its own reality and sociality that can shed light on people's philosophies and world views about their living conditions and its entangled realities (Puri 2016: 110; Malaby 2003). The aim of my research thus is to explore how people conceptualize uncertainty, luck, and chance, and to investigate the tension that lies between what people care about versus what the government cares for in a state-regulated game of chance industry. My proposed research looks beyond pathologizing gambling to open a space to examine the infrastructure of monetizing luck and uncertainty, the sector's role in conjuring political power, and how the desire to engage with games of chance is created and sustained in the late neoliberal ethnographic sensorium of Turkey.
Paper short abstract:
This paper shows how Israeli filmmakers’ middle class position is tied to the rise of a new genre of personal cinema in Israel. It interrogates the ways in which filmmakers finance their productions and recruit volunteers to work on sets, and depicts the ‘economy of favours’ that emerge among them.
Paper long abstract:
The paper seeks to understand how the young Israeli filmmakers’ economic relations with other people and institutions have shaped the form and content of their work, led them to make films about their personal traumas, and developed their philosophies about how to be true to themselves and what type of film is worth making. Specifically, it interrogates the ways in which the young Israeli filmmakers financed their productions and recruited volunteers to work on their films, and depicts the ‘economy of favours’ that emerged among them. The overall purpose of this paper is to show how the filmmakers’ turn to identity politics is linked to their economic position.
I discuss how the maintenance of the unity between the filmmakers’ personal lives and the content of their films is key to the way they perform their fundraising and volunteer recruitment; in other words, how identity-based representations are important in the quest for making films. I show how this is commonly acknowledged to be the way the Israeli film industry functions at all levels, including the relationships between filmmakers and state funding bodies. The analysis lingers on the tensions between the language of agency and care within this ‘economy of favours’ and the filmmakers’ constant state of dependence on one another and on their families and communities at a time of shrinking state support for the arts. I propose that the existence of strong informal networks within the Israeli middle class enables neoliberal reforms to occur without significant public resistance.