The Making of the Middle Class Toward a Transnational History

"Both materially grounded and sensitive to notions of subjectivity and discourse, this timely and provocative volume challenges us to historicize the multiple, transnational formations and meanings of the middle class. Modernity itself is thus recast as a set of multiple, entangled, locally rooted processes that did not begin in 'the West' and travel elsewhere, but were mutually constituted and reconstituted in a global and colonial context." Florencia E. Mallon, Chair, Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison "The Making of the Middle Class is a first-rate collection of essays by top scholars writing on a topic of enormous interest: the middle class as an evolving conception and historical reality. The contributors focus on locales around the world. While the issues that they raise take locally specific forms, their essays converge around shared central questions, giving this stimulating collection a rare intellectual unity and focus." Michael Frisch, University at Buffalo, SUNY "Scholars interested in the formation and historical role of the middle class will also value the historiographic discussions scattered through the book and the extensive bibliography." Dennis Gilbert, Reviews in History "The Making of the Middle Class: Toward a Transnational History brings together new work on a subject - the history of the middle class - that has previously seen only fragmented historical discussion.Yet, the volume does more than simply bring the middle classes back into the fold of global history. Rather, by taking a transnational lens, it has spurred an ambitious project to connect the history of the middle classes to broader discussions on global cultural identities, the history of globalization, practices of modernity, imperialism, and neoliberalism. The authors make it clear that their volume represents not the culmination, but the very beginnings, of a historiographical project. [...] The volume offers a strong theoretical baseline for the emergent global histories of the middle class, and it is a collection that any scholar interested in questions of the middle class as sociological or political phenomenon will be wise to read and consider. It successfully broadens spatial conceptions of middle class histories, thoroughly integrating middle class history into global history." -Lisa Ubelaker Andrade, on H-Soz-u-Kult, Dec 2012