Power of Knowledge: The Imaginary Formation of the Chinese Middle Stratum in an Era of Growth and Stability
Résumé
‘In the present stage how to structure and expand the middle stratum in our society?’ The emergence of a Chinese middle class has become a hot topic. Political leaders, researchers, journalists and potential members of this stratum discuss and write extensively about the consequences of this phenomenon. The objective of this paper is not to produce a new contribution to an already active field of research but to understand how researchers and intellectuals construct a ‘class’, which they are supposed to define. It is the preliminary step in a long-term research project focusing on the analysis of lifestyles, conflicts and the concept of class in contemporary China. In academic literature, classes and strata are generally perceived as both objective and subjective realities. The middle class, for example, is to be analyzed not ...