/512/ Reading Club: Middle-Class Dreams & Nightmares

On Göran Therborn's article, "Dreams and Nightmares of the World's Middle Classes".

The penultimate episode of this block on the middle class, we discuss the differing fortunes and politics of the global North and South middle-classes – as well as ways they may be similar.

• Is the middle-class dream increasingly only a dream?

• Can the "ever-rising middle-class wave" in China and India sustain itself?

• Is being middle-class defined by one's consumption? By income? By something else?

• How have fears changed: from being politically "squeezed" between to proletariat and bourgeoisie, to being economically "squeezed" and fearing falling?

• What politics do the middle-classes generate? What kind of populism?