Middle-Class Values in India and Western Europe - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1138095621 ISBN 13: 9781138095625

Publisher: Routledge, 2017

Synopsis

Middle-class Values in India and Western Europe discusses the distinctive attributes of the middle classes in France, Germany and India. The construction of new norms of respectability is a universal feature of the middles classes, though their rhetoric has varied in different societies. Drawing on historical experiences in both western Europe and colonial India, the contributors to this volume try to understand the common inheritance of these newly emerging middle classes and the social and political impact they have had on their societies of origin. Each study is based on detailed research and combines both theoretical and empirical material.

The book is divide into three sections. The first section, ‘The Rise of the Middle Class in India and Western Europe’ has three chapters and they dwell on the middle class and secularization; the middle classes in twentieth-century India; and the values of the middle classes in Germany. The second section, ‘Class Formation in the Twentieth Century’ contains four essays which discuss the character of the Indian middle class; middle-class values and the creation of a civil society; the ‘Grand Ecoles’ in France; and the changing social structure of the German society and the transformation of the German bourgeois culture. The last section, ‘Values and Orientations’ consists of five papers on the Indian middle class and explore the cultural construction of gender in urban India; the Dalit middle class; the political orientation of the middle classes; the politics of the middle classes and their shifting class values.

About this title

About the Author

Imtiaz Ahmad is former Professor of Political Sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Helmut Reifeld is India representative at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, New Delhi.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1138095621
• ISBN 13: 9781138095625
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224
• Editor: Ahmad Imtiaz, Reifeld Helmut