XVII Congress of the Brazilian Studies Association

The Varied Meanings of ‘Middle Class’: Emergent Class and Citizen Subjectivities among Brazil’s Once-Rising Poor

• In Event: Contemporary Politics and Society in Brazil

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of the past two decades—one known for poverty reduction, the other for spiraling economic, political, and cultural crisis—on the class and citizen subjectivities of Brazil’s “once rising poor,” that is, poor and working-class households who experienced socioeconomic mobility during the years of governance under the leftist Workers Party (PT). While this demographic sector had initially been celebrated as Brazil’s “new middle class,” this identificatory moniker lost whatever purchase it had with the economic contraction that set in around 2013. And yet, poverty reduction under the PT was inextricably tied to images of middle-classness, often glossed as the aspiration for a good job, one’s own house, and a college education. This paper examines the meanings of “middle class”—as an identificatory label and as a lifestyle marker—for once-rising poor Brazilians in the northeastern city of Recife. Drawing from survey and ethnographic data conducted in 2016-17, I examine the relationships between middle-classness and consumerism, education, online social media, urban geography, employment, and leisure practices. I also consider the question, what citizenship ethos was produced among Brazil’s once-rising poor? Did poverty reduction under the PT engender politically active and engaged citizens or, instead, render citizen subjectivity more individualistic, more consumerist and, ultimately, more neoliberal? The paper’s broad argument is that neither conceptual avenue adequately captures the disparate and uneven class subjectivities of Brazil’s once-rising poor.

Author

• Benjamin Junge, State University of New York at New Paltz