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The Narrative of ‘the African Middle Class’ and Its Conceptual Limitations

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Middle Classes in Africa

Part of the book series: Frontiers of Globalization ((FOG))

Abstract

The core of the ‘middle class narrative’ points to the purchasing power of the growing ‘middle class’ and its stimulating effect on the African economy. Promoted by the media and consultancies, the term appears to relate to a growing, homogeneous, financially fluid, and politically outspoken section of society. Against this background, the main aim of this chapter is to discuss critically the conceptual limitations of this term—the ‘African middle class’. To date, social structure analyses relating to the Global South have analysed socio-economic ‘strata’, or ‘class’ in a (neo-)Marxist or Weberian sense, or ‘class’ without specific parameters. The existence of a middle socio-economic stratum, however, does not imply the presence of a socio-culturally homogeneous ‘class’ in Marxian or Weberian terms. To analyse socio-cultural differentiation we propose two concepts developed in German sociology: ‘socio-cultural milieus’ and ‘small lifeworlds’.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    PPP stands for ‘purchasing power parity’ and is used to compare income across countries by taking into account the different consumer prices in the compared countries.

  2. 2.

    The social anthropological perspectives are discussed by O’Kane and Scharrer in this volume.

  3. 3.

    In a somewhat similar way Birdsall sets an approximate threshold of more than US$ 10 for the income of secure middle class (Birdsall 2015, 218).

  4. 4.

    Such amenities are piped drinking water, a flush toilet, and electricity (Thurlow et al. 2015, 595).

  5. 5.

    Some of the milieu concepts interpret differences between socio-cultural groups with reference to a value continuum from ‘tradition’ to ‘modernity’ (individualized) and leave a space for ‘reorientation’ open (Sinus-Institut 2015).

  6. 6.

    The volume edited by Solga et al. (2009) gives a good overview of classic and new approaches in the analysis of social structure and social differentiation , especially concerning sociological approaches in the German-speaking areas. In addition, see Isenböck et al. (2014) for an overview of the debate on milieus, Rössel and Otte (2012) on lifestyles.

  7. 7.

    The project ‘Middle Classes on the Rise’ consisted of a sociological wing (Dieter Neubert and Florian Stoll) and an anthropological wing (Erdmute Alber, Lena Kroeker, and Maike Voigt). We refer here to data from the sociological wing based on 90 interviews and observations during several field trips to Kenya between 2013 and 2015, mainly conducted in Nairobi and supplemented with data from Mombasa, Eldoret, and Kisumu.

  8. 8.

    Some of the milieus seem to be typical middle stratum milieus (e.g. social climbers and young professionals). Others seem to reach beyond the middle stratum, but we did not extend the research beyond the middle stratum.

  9. 9.

    For the Neo-Traditional and Christian milieus see Neubert and Stoll (2015, 10ff.). For a short description of all milieus see Neubert (2016, 120f).

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  1. Bayreuth University, Bayreuth, Germany

    Dieter Neubert & Florian Stoll

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  1. Dieter Neubert
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  1. Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies, Bayreuth, Germany

    Lena Kroeker

  2. Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany

    David O'Kane

  3. Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany

    Tabea Scharrer

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Neubert, D., Stoll, F. (2018). The Narrative of ‘the African Middle Class’ and Its Conceptual Limitations. In: Kroeker, L., O'Kane, D., Scharrer, T. (eds) Middle Classes in Africa. Frontiers of Globalization. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62148-7_3

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