The sociospatial reconfiguration of middle classes and their impact on politics and development in the global south: preliminary ideas for future research

Abstract

The growth of the middle class has become a subject of growing fascination for scholars as of late, not just because the numbers are so astonishing but also because the patterns suggest a shift in both global demographics and the regional geographies of development. Recent estimates from the World Bank indicate that the world's middle class is expected “to grow from 430 million in 2000 to 1.15 billion in 2030”;¹ and that the greatest growth will occur in the developing world. While in 2000, only 56% of the world's middle classes lived in the developing world, this figure is expected to reach 93% by the year 2030 – with China and India alone expected to account for two-thirds of all this expansion.² What may be most striking about the middle classes are not merely their mind-boggling numbers, or their location in the developing world, or the fact that these particular class actors have been ignored for years in studies of late industrializers, or even the fact that the newfound interest in the middle classes comes on the heels of a controversy about the relevance of class in the contemporary era more generally (see Portes, 2000). Indeed, what may be most noteworthy is the set of adjectives that come attached to the study of middle classes, as well as the fact that these qualifiers are different than those employed in prior periods.

Citation

Davis, D.E. (2010), "The sociospatial reconfiguration of middle classes and their impact on politics and development in the global south: preliminary ideas for future research", Go, J. (Ed.) Political Power and Social Theory (Political Power and Social Theory, Vol. 21), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 241-267. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0198-8719(2010)0000021014