Journal of Sociology and Social Work

What about Middle Class? Theoretical Approaches and Realities
Andreas N. Lytras

Abstract
This article regards a systematic, but selective, searching in a big pool of ideas, terms, data, and ideologies. The middle class is a part of the “trinity” of class and social analysis, for two (or more) centuries. Its official birth is done in the “place” of liberal political economy. In the common empiricism of the British Empire or of the Anglophone counties, every person, who isn’t an aristocrat, is a member of middle class. A serious question is the next: where and why the boarders between the three classes are been located? The classic analysis has developed discussable, but explanative, criteria for the description of economic or social classes. The contemporary theories have delivered more complexity of answers, but have not overcome the initial empirical image. The middle class remains a phantom. It is a spiritual inhabitant of beliefs, but we can find it only in shadows, as an active social subject. Is it a real social class, an intellectual problem, or a distortion? In this article the elaboration of the different approaches and their confrontation with data are the first steps for the creation of a brief, but systematic, description for the trajectory of middle class.

Full Text: PDF     DOI: 10.15640/jssw.v7n1a10