Middle-class anxiety and moderate prosperity: South Africa and China in comparative perspective

Abstract

This article presents the first comparative study of the middle class in Africa and China, drawing on published research from both regions, furnished with analysis of popular culture and ethnographic insights from research on South Africa’s new black middle class. This study explores four topics of theoretical and empirical significance. Firstly, definitional debates about the qualitative and quantitative classification of the middle class, including the appropriateness of the term in (South) Africa and China. Secondly, the appropriation of the Chinese concept of xiaokang (moderate prosperity) tor the study of Africa. Thirdly, anxiety over social and economic status, related in particular to distinctions between strata within the middle class, building on a distinction between middle-class moderate prosperity and middle-class affluence. Fourthly, anxiety over contradictions between emerging individual desires and traditional familial commitments, impacting South Africa’s moderately prosperous in particular, with broader cultural implications tor emerging African and Chinese modernities.