Knowledge, Identity and the Middle Class: From Collective to Individualised Class Formation?

Abstract

This paper highlights a number of strong indications of important changes in the work and labour market experiences of professionals and managers, the core of the ‘new middle class‘ (nmc) in most contemporary class theories. Following an outline of some of these changes, it is argued that several central theoretical strategies shared by class theorists - notably a residual ‘functional essentialism’ and the choice of microfoundations - prevent them from adequately theorising these changes. The paper offers an alternative approach to theorising the contemporary nmc that avoids the reductionism of many existing approaches, and that is grounded in microfoundations focused on the relation of narratively constructed identities to social action. On this basis, an account of the contemporary emergence of a new segment of the nmc, the ‘nmc bricoleur’, is outlined, and its relation to empirical studies of the changing nmc is suggested. The paper concludes with some speculations about the likely future of Anglophone new middle classes.