Lower Middle Class Nation

Middle-class households feel left behind and have questioned the benefits of economic globalisation.

"Lower-Middle-Class Nation provides an unparalleled interdisciplinary cultural history of the lower-middle-class worker in British life since 1850. Considering highbrow, lowbrow, and middle-brow forms across literature, film, television and more, Nicola Bishop traces the development of the lower-middle-class from the mid-19th century to the present day, tackling a number of pressing, consistent concerns such as automation, commuting, and the search for a life/work balance. Above all, this book brings together ideas about class, nationhood, and gender, demonstrating that a particularly British lower-middle-class identity is constructed through the spaces and practices of the everyday"--

Lower-Middle-Class Nation provides an unparalleled interdisciplinary cultural history of the lower-middle-class worker in British life since 1850. Considering highbrow, lowbrow, and middle-brow forms across literature, film, television and more, Nicola Bishop traces the development of the lower-middle-class from the mid-19th century to the present day, tackling a number of pressing, consistent concerns such as automation, commuting, and the search for a life/work balance. Above all, this book brings together ideas about class, nationhood, and gender, demonstrating that a particularly British lower-middle-class identity is constructed through the spaces and practices of the everyday. Aimed at undergraduate, postgraduates and scholars working in media and social history, literature, popular culture, cultural studies and sociology, Lower-Middle-Class Nation represents a new direction in cultural histories of work, labour, and leisure.

Why the United States has developed an economy divided between rich and poor and how racism helped bring this about. The United States is becoming a nation of rich and poor, with few families in the middle. In this book, MIT economist Peter Temin offers an illuminating way to look at the vanishing middle class. Temin argues that American history and politics, particularly slavery and its aftermath, play an important part in the widening gap between rich and poor. Temin employs a well-known, simple model of a dual economy to examine the dynamics of the rich/poor divide in America, and outlines ways to work toward greater equality so that America will no longer have one economy for the rich and one for the poor. Many poorer Americans live in conditions resembling those of a developing country—substandard education, dilapidated housing, and few stable employment opportunities. And although almost half of black Americans are poor, most poor people are not black. Conservative white politicians still appeal to the racism of poor white voters to get support for policies that harm low-income people as a whole, casting recipients of social programs as the Other—black, Latino, not like "us." Politicians also use mass incarceration as a tool to keep black and Latino Americans from participating fully in society. Money goes to a vast entrenched prison system rather than to education. In the dual justice system, the rich pay fines and the poor go to jail.

Lower-Middle-Class Nation provides an unparalleled interdisciplinary cultural history of the lower-middle-class worker in British life since 1850. Considering highbrow, lowbrow, and middle-brow forms across literature, film, television and more, Nicola Bishop traces the development of the lower-middle-class from the mid-19th century to the present day, tackling a number of pressing, consistent concerns such as automation, commuting, and the search for a life/work balance. Above all, this book brings together ideas about class, nationhood, and gender, demonstrating that a particularly British lower-middle-class identity is constructed through the spaces and practices of the everyday. Aimed at undergraduate, postgraduates and scholars working in media and social history, literature, popular culture, cultural studies and sociology, Lower-Middle-Class Nation represents a new direction in cultural histories of work, labour, and leisure.

A unique intersection between periodical and literary scholarship, and class and gender history, this book showcases a brand-new approach to surveying a popular domestic magazine. Reading Woman’s Weekly alongside titles including Good Housekeeping, My Weekly, Peg’s Paper and Woman’s Own, and works by authors including Dot Allan, E.M. Delafield, George Orwell and J.B. Priestley, it positions the publication within both the contemporary magazine market and the field of literature more broadly, redrawing the parameters of that field as it approaches the domestic magazine as a literary genre in its own right. Between 1918 and 1958, Woman’s Weekly targeted a lower middle-class readership: broadly, housewives and unmarried clerical workers on low incomes, who viewed or aspired to view themselves as middle-class. Examining the magazine’s distinctively lower middle-class treatment of issues including the First World War’s impact on gender, the status of housewives and working women, women’s contribution to the Second World War effort, and Britain’s post-war economic and social recovery, this book supplies fresh and challenging insights into lower middle-class culture, during a period in which Britain’s lower middle classes were gaining prominence, and middle-class lifestyles were undergoing rapid and radical change.

Reveals that many Americans share the same opinions and values about middle class society

America has a long tradition of middle-class radicalism, albeit one that intellectual orthodoxy has tended to obscure. The Radical Middle Class seeks to uncover the democratic, populist, and even anticapitalist legacy of the middle class. By examining in particular the independent small business sector or petite bourgeoisie, using Progressive Era Portland, Oregon, as a case study, Robert Johnston shows that class still matters in America. But it matters only if the politics and culture of the leading player in affairs of class, the middle class, is dramatically reconceived. This book is a powerful combination of intellectual, business, labor, medical, and, above all, political history. Its author also humanizes the middle class by describing the lives of four small business owners: Harry Lane, Will Daly, William U'Ren, and Lora Little. Lane was Portland's reform mayor before becoming one of only six senators to vote against U.S. entry into World War I. Daly was Oregon's most prominent labor leader and a onetime Socialist. U'Ren was the national architect of the direct democracy movement. Little was a leading antivaccinationist. The Radical Middle Class further explores the Portland Ku Klux Klan and concludes with a national overview of the American middle class from the Progressive Era to the present. With its engaging narrative, conceptual richness, and daring argumentation, it will be welcomed by all who understand that reexamining the middle class can yield not only better scholarship but firmer grounds for democratic hope.