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In addition to their desire to address the gaps in my own essay, one possible explanation rests in a deeper and more nuanced appreciation of the role of ideology in middle-class identity formation, an issue that I ignored almost completely. The importance of understanding the ideological underpinnings of “middle-classness” is a point directly taken up by several of the commentators, but it is best articulated and most convincingly argued by Raka Ray in her nuanced historical examination of the national political projects that sustained the idea of a middle class as moral vanguard and repository of universal values and aspirations. She shows how the “ideological work that middle-class identity performs” sustains unity among disparate middle-class forces, at times achieving such cultural resonance that it will engage even non-middle classes in a common political project. That is, Ray argues that the idea of the middle class as a social category has become so culturally appealing and ideologically hegemonic in modern India that it has even enabled political unity behind the class projects of the elite.

Questions about the role and composition of the middle class have been examined and debated in the academy and in the political sphere for more than 100 years. In analyses of the Indian middle class specifically, two questions, both addressed by Diane Davis, seem to excite the most attention. The first has to do with the definition of a middle class, a term that has its origins in a very different social formation as well as its potentially mediating function in democracy. The second and more recent question has to do with what is variously called the “new” or “emerging” middle classes – in short, the middle classes of a liberalizing India.

In the past three decades India has been one of the fastest growing countries in the world. Per capita income has increased fourfold, from $229 in 1980 to $318 in 1990 to nearly $900 in 2010 (constant 2000 dollars). Although there is growing evidence of increases in income inequality, standard measures of inequality such as the Gini coefficient are still considerably less in India than in other Brazil, Russia, India, Chinas (BRICs) (or the United States). Consequently this rapid growth has led to a substantial expansion of India's middle class (and a concomitant decline in poverty).

This chapter challenges middle-class bias in work-life literature by examining work-life balance dynamics through a social class perspective. It reveals class-based disparities in physical, temporal, and psychological outcomes, including the role of economic capital in work-life balance and the challenges encountered by the socially mobile in achieving psychological balance. It emphasizes the need to acknowledge social class implications for work-life balance and urges organizations to address class-based inconsistencies and inequalities in their practices.

There has been substantial interest in US cesarean rates, which increased from 5% of deliveries in the 1970s to nearly one-third of births by the mid-2000s. Explanations typically emphasize individual risk factors (e.g., advanced maternal age, increased BMI, and greater desire for control over delivery) of women giving birth, or address institutional factors, such as the medicalization of childbirth and the culture of liability leading physicians to practice defensive medicine. We focus here on another non-medical explanation – childbirth education (CBE). CBE is an important, underexplored mechanism that can shape women’s expectations about labor and birth and potentially lead them to expect, or desire, a cesarean delivery as a normalized outcome. We analyze data from three waves (2002, 2006, 2013) of the Listening to Mothers national survey on US women’s childbearing experiences (n = 3,985). Using logistic regression analysis, we examined both mode of delivery (vaginal versus cesarean), and attitudes about future request for elective cesarean among both primiparous and multiparous women. Despite previous research suggesting that CBE increased the likelihood of vaginal delivery, we find that CBE attendance was not associated with likelihood of vaginal delivery among either primiparous or multiparous women. However, both primiparous and multiparous women who attended CBE classes were significantly more likely to say they would request a future, elective cesarean. Furthermore, these effects were in the opposite direction of effects for natural birth attitudes. Our findings suggest that contemporary CBE classes may be a form of “anticipatory socialization”, potentially priming women’s acceptance of medicalized childbirth.

This chapter reviews student engagement and learning over of a six year study period (>500 students) in a technology rich learning environment. The technology rich learning environment in this project consists of tablet PCs for each student (1:1 environment), visually immersive multiple projection screens, and collaborative digital inking software. This chapter reviews the education problem being addressed, and the learning theory used as a lens to focus specific active learning pedagogical techniques to address the educational problem. From this problem-based learning theory grounded approach, the features desired in a technology rich learning environment were developed. The approach is shared in this chapter with specific detailed examples to allow others to implement technology rich learning environments with active learning pedagogical approaches to address specific education problems in their institution. The technology rich learning environment implemented and studied includes multiple hardware/software pieces to create a system level solution versus a single device or single app solution.

This chapter offers a few stylized observations about the middle class and its role in the fall of communist regimes in East Central Europe. I claim that successive East European modernization projects during the 20th century (intrawar, communist, and postcommunist) were essentially middle-class “revolutions from above.” They occurred in a backward region among late modernizers keenly aware of their peripheral position and were based on and carried out by the state. Both a product of the state and dependent on it, the middle class was the main actor and supporter of these modernization efforts. I also argue that the Solidarity movement in 1980/81 and the 1989 collapse of communism were the last successful middle-class revolutions. Hopes for another political rebellion against postcommunist authoritarianism may be misplaced, since the transformational potential of the East European middle class, produced by the peculiarities of communist rule, has been exhausted. Fast progressing modernization, segmentation, and fragmentation of identity of the postcommunist middle class brought about by the economic, cultural, and political integration with the West undercut its mobilizational potential and its role as an agent of political transformations. The East European middle-class revolution against communist rule can offer four basic lessons. First, the middle class is a cultural and historical not economic phenomenon. Second, it is extremely rare for the middle class to become a collective actor, the class for itself. Third, the main competitors of middle-class identity are nationalism, ethnicity and religion. Finally, postmodernity with its fluidity, uncertainty, fractured identities, fragmented lifestyles, consumption patterns, and status configuration does not provide facilitating conditions for middle-class solidarity and mobilization, making it politically feeble.