tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/middle-classes-735/articlesMiddle classes – The Conversation2023-10-11T15:15:40Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2134902023-10-11T15:15:40Z2023-10-11T15:15:40ZWhy ‘toxic masculinity’ isn’t a useful term for understanding all of the ways to be a man<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551355/original/file-20231002-17-jilxp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=35%2C8%2C5812%2C3874&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Masculinity is complex, diverse and can be expressed in multiple ways.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/view-back-lonely-standing-man-high-1469768498">yanik88/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>There seem to be as many interpretations of what “<a href="https://theconversation.com/toxic-masculinity-what-does-it-mean-where-did-it-come-from-and-is-the-term-useful-or-harmful-189298#:%7E:text=The%20phrase%20emphasises%20the%20worst,%22toxic%22%20for%20two%20reasons.">toxic masculinity</a>” means as there are uses of the term.</p>
<p>Some believe it’s a way to criticise what they see as specific negative behaviour and attitudes often associated with men. Others, such as broadcaster Piers Morgan, claim that media interest in toxic masculinity is part of a “<a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/wake-up-why-the-world-has-gone-nuts-piers-morgan?variant=33046214377506">woke culture</a>” that aims to emasculate men. Others believe toxic masculinity is a fundamental part of <a href="https://oneworld-publications.com/work/boys-will-be-boys/">manhood</a>. </p>
<p>My <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00380385231172121#bibr26-00380385231172121">research</a> into working-class young men in south Wales shows how masculinity is changing. Some men remain hostile to the notion of toxic masculinity and see the term as a vehicle for shaming men. And some are caught in a conflict between changing ideas of masculinity and traditional, unhealthy expressions of manhood. This is further complicated by the term itself.</p>
<p>In its simplest sense, toxic masculinity refers to an overemphasis or exaggerated expression of characteristics <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Toxic_Masculinity.html?id=9FzBDwAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">commonly associated</a> with masculinity. These include traits such as competition, self-reliance and being stoic, which produce behaviours such as risk-taking, fear of showing weakness, and an inability to discuss emotions. These have negative implications for both men and women. </p>
<p>For example, a rejection of weakness and vulnerability may prevent some men from <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Dying-to-be-Men-Psychosocial-Environmental-and-Biobehavioral-Directions/Courtenay/p/book/9780415878760#:%7E:text=Description,In%20this%20book%2C%20Dr.">discussing issues</a> such as mental health. Similarly, an inability to express emotion may expose itself through frustration, anger and acts of physical violence. </p>
<p>But masculine traits such as being stoic can equally be valuable in some circumstances, such as emergencies and making lifesaving decisions. In essence, masculinity is complex, diverse and can be expressed in multiple ways.</p>
<h2>More than one type of masculinity</h2>
<p>However, masculinity that involves courage, toughness and physical strength has <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3149/jms.0703.295">historically</a> been held in high regard by society. </p>
<p>Masculinity is socially, historically, culturally and individually determined, and subject to change. It can be influenced by a person’s status, power, place, social class and ethnicity. So, a person’s differing circumstances establish or enable different expressions of masculinity. </p>
<p>For example, traditionally high rates of manual employment in heavy industries and family relationships helped establish the gender roles of the male breadwinner and female homemaker. This reinforced masculine traits such as toughness and stoicism in men.</p>
<p>In recent decades though, the way people in western countries work has changed a lot. Manual jobs have <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-10792-4_6">decreased</a> while service sector work has increased. These alterations have contributed to the increase in <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/introducing-gender-and-womens-studies-9781352009903/#:%7E:text=With%20fully%20revised%20chapters%20written,examples%20and%20questions%20to%20consider.">the number of women</a> working, and their wages have became an <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-gb/Redundant+Masculinities%3F%3A+Employment+Change+and+White+Working+Class+Youth-p-9781405105866">important part</a> of household incomes.</p>
<p>Movements like <a href="https://metoomvmt.org">#MeToo</a> and brands like Gillette and its We Believe: The Best Men Can Be advert have led to further <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/15/gillette-metoo-ad-on-toxic-masculinity-cuts-deep-with-mens-rights-activists">examination</a> of masculinity. They have challenged negative expressions of masculinity, encouraging men to change their behaviour and instead adopt a <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442232921/Masculinities-in-the-Making-From-the-Local-to-the-Global">more positive</a> version of masculinity. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EkRxdtmJ4L4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Gilette’s We Believe The Best Men Can Be advert from 2019.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Against this backdrop, we urgently need to reassess what the current research tells us about men and masculinity.</p>
<h2>Men are changing</h2>
<p>Some <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Inclusive-Masculinity-The-Changing-Nature-of-Masculinities/Anderson/p/book/9780415893909">studies</a> suggest that men are changing their behaviour as society and the economy change. For example, studies of white, middle-class men who attend university have found that they are more likely to express their emotions verbally and physically.</p>
<p>But <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-78819-7">critics</a> of that idea say that such young men can transgress typical notions of masculinity because of their higher social status.</p>
<p>A new wave of qualitative research has shown that some <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Young-Working-Class-Men-in-Transition/Roberts/p/book/9780367473723">working-class</a> young men are changing their behaviour. They are more open about their emotions, admit to feeling vulnerable and have more egalitarian views on housework. However, they still sometimes use sexist and homophobic language. </p>
<p>My recent <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00380385231172121#bibr26-00380385231172121">study</a> is part of a growing criticism of how masculinity is defined and talked about. I carried out my research at a youth centre and focused on a group of working-class young men aged between 12 and 21. I talked to the young men about their school experiences, work ambitions and looked at their behaviour. </p>
<p>The study was based in the Gwent valleys, a former coal mining community. It is a place known for its traditional ideas of masculinity, such as being strong and tough. But also I found that these young men showed softer sides of masculinity, such as empathy, compassion and sensitivity.</p>
<p>These changes and softer sides of masculinity coexisted with behaviours often linked with negative expressions of masculinity, such as violence and crime. I describe this as “<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00380385231172121#bibr26-00380385231172121">amalgamated masculinities</a>”.</p>
<p>My findings strengthen the idea that positive changes in masculinity are happening socially. </p>
<h2>Changing the narrative</h2>
<p>We must be aware of the harm caused by exaggerated masculine traits but language like “toxic masculinity” can be unhelpful. We should focus on promoting the benefits of positive expressions of manhood, such as emotional openness and empathy. </p>
<p>We should also do more work to try to understand why positive changes in masculinity are happening. Once we understand this, we can think about how to encourage these positive changes to make them more common in society. This could help to make masculinity better for everyone.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213490/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Gater works for Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research and Data. He receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council. </span></em></p>A new wave of research shows how working-class young men are changing their behaviour. But some remain hostile to the term “toxic masculinity” and see it as a vehicle for shaming men.Richard Gater, Postdoctoral research fellow at the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research and Data, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1340022020-03-20T11:02:59Z2020-03-20T11:02:59ZPandemics don’t heal divisions – they reveal them. South Africa is a case in point<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321358/original/file-20200318-1926-zwj5be.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A taxi rank marshal sprays hand sanitiser on a commuter wearing a mask as a preventive measure as she arrives at the Wanderers taxi rank in Johannesburg.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Marco Longari/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Some around the world predict that the COVID-19 will heal divisions and narrow inequalities. A pandemic, <a href="https://africasacountry.com/2020/03/what-lies-ahead">they claim,</a> can remind us of our common humanity and the need to discard prejudices. It can also highlight inequalities and injustices and prompt people in power to deal with them.</p>
<p>In Europe, some predict it <a href="https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-gig-economy-work-28f12834-f1ec-4ae4-9b17-cfa65b92c3ef.html">will highlight</a> the plight of people in the ‘gig economy’ who do not enjoy a guaranteed wage. In the US, there are hopes that it may make it easier for people who cannot <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/17/senators-push-to-expand-vote-by-mail-as-coronavirus-keeps-people-home.html">get to polling booths to vote</a>.</p>
<p>In South Africa, some hope it will prompt action against the conditions which make it harder for <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2020-03-19-thanks-to-the-coronavirus-we-can-see-the-possible/">poor people to protect themselves</a>. </p>
<p>The claim that pandemics prompt the rich and people in power to care more about social inequities anywhere is dubious. Those who believe this like to quote the historian Walter Scheidel’s 2017 book <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691183251/the-great-leveler">The Great Leveler</a> which, they claim, argued that pandemics can dent inequality by showing that human progress depends on tackling inequality. </p>
<p>But Scheidel didn’t argue that epidemics showed the rich how much they had in common with the poor. His point is that they weakened the rich in ways which helped the poor, which is not at all what the optimists have in mind.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/opinion/pandemic-coronavirus-compassion.html">a recent interview</a>, Frank Snowden, an American historian of epidemics, said he agreed with a World Health Organisation (WHO) official that the virus should teach us that</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the health of the most vulnerable people among us is a determining factor for the health of all of us.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But he was not optimistic that the lesson would be learned.</p>
<p>Snowden finds that pandemics <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-pandemics-change-history">can heighten prejudice against the poor</a>. In Paris, after the 1848 revolution or the (1871) Paris Commune, people were “slaughtered” because the</p>
<blockquote>
<p>people who were in command saw that the working classes were dangerous politically, but they were also very dangerous medically.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So, attitudes which prop up inequality and division may actually worsen under the pressure of an epidemic. It seems logical to expect those who are threatened by their fellow citizens to feel even more prejudice when they face a medical threat.</p>
<p>Reactions in South Africa today may not show that prejudices against the poor are getting worse. But they are very much alive and give little reason for hope that the virus will bring South Africans closer together or trigger more energetic action against poverty.</p>
<h2>Irrational responses</h2>
<p>The first evidence came before the virus reached the country. Radio talk shows were inundated by callers warning that ‘porous borders’ placed the country at risk. This expressed a widespread South African prejudice: immigrants from elsewhere in Africa are a disease-bearing threat.</p>
<p>This was irrational – poor people do not visit China or the European countries where the virus has spread. But prejudices are irrational.</p>
<p>As the virus arrived, new prejudices emerged. Demands for controls mounted: South Africans would only be safe if borders were closed and everyone’s movement was controlled. President Cyril Ramaphosa was denounced for not locking everyone down. </p>
<p>Snowden’s work shows that harsh lockdowns <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-pandemics-change-history">don’t work</a>. Controls on ‘social distance’ do, but only if people are treated sympathetically. If they are not, they don’t trust the authorities and will not report cases.</p>
<p>But middle classes used to living far from the poor do see control as the solution to all problems. The focus on Ramaphosa showed a deep-seated view – ‘leaders’ are assumed to require supernatural powers and so are blamed for everything which goes wrong. This is an anti-democratic view which shows no faith in the abilities of grassroots citizens (or much grasp of reality: presidents don’t single-handedly control epidemics). </p>
<p>It also judges political leaders on how ‘tough’ they get, which is unlikely to heal any divisions.</p>
<h2>Prejudices</h2>
<p>Attitudes towards poor black people living in shack settlements and urban townships are more complicated. </p>
<p>It’s frequently said that the virus is sure to decimate these areas. This partly supports the view that eyes are being opened to poverty because it is based on real concern: it is harder for people who may lack access to clean water, live in overcrowded conditions, rely on public transport and lack quality health care to protect themselves. People in these areas who have jobs are unlikely to enjoy the luxury of working at home.</p>
<p>But most of the ‘concern’ expresses prejudices which feed division and inequality. Many in the middle-class see the places where poor people live as dangerous and disease-ridden –– the way upper class Europeans saw slums in their countries. Their residents are assumed to be ignorant and dirty although in reality they are well-informed on the virus and are often more concerned about personal hygiene than the middle class.</p>
<p>It also expresses common prejudices about majority rule – it is assumed that it will always end in disaster, even if the government seems to be doing what it should. On some radio channels, the government is denounced by callers for not informing the public, although it has constantly done just that: many in the racial minorities assume that nothing a majority black government says can be believed.</p>
<p>Given South Africa’s racial divisions, it is perhaps no surprise that some black people replied with their own myth: that the virus could not affect you if you were black. Perhaps the fact that the virus began with <a href="https://www.dispatchlive.co.za/news/2020-03-09-breaking-news-four-new-covid-19-cases-confirmed-in-sa/">people returning from skiing holidays </a> was too good to pass up for people used to enduring the myth that some South Africans are inherently better than others.</p>
<p>Another response – although this was not purely South African – <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2020/03/17/here-s-what-sa-retailers-are-doing-to-curb-coronavirus-panic-buying">was panic buying </a>. There are many interpretations of why this happens but the people doing it were affluent enough to afford bulk buying, their first instinct was to grab what they could, and they may be stocking up so they can opt out of society rather than joining others to fight the virus, the response Ramaphosa proposed when he announced the government measures.</p>
<p>None of these responses signal that divisions are narrowing. Nor, despite some concern for people living in poverty, do they suggest that the threat of an epidemic has prompted new desire to change the conditions in which poor people live.</p>
<p>So, South African attitudes may not express a desire to make poor people pay for a virus they did not bring. But they also give little cheer to those who expect a new era of solidarity and social concern.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/134002/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Friedman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Reactions in South Africa give little reason for hope that the virus will bring people closer together or trigger more energetic action against poverty.Steven Friedman, Professor of Political Studies, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/859422017-11-01T13:19:51Z2017-11-01T13:19:51ZWhy the private sector’s hype about the African middle class isn’t helpful<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192424/original/file-20171030-18683-10ovx28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Oluwole Urban Market near Marina in Lagos. Being middle class is more than just being a consumer.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Akintunde Akinleye</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The African middle class is of huge interest to business. This was confirmed again recently by well attended seminars in South Africa’s big cities to discuss
<a href="http://www.uctunileverinstitute.co.za/">“African Lions: groundbreaking study on the middle class in sub-Saharan Africa”</a>. </p>
<p>The study was motivated by the African Development Bank’s <a href="http://www.uctunileverinstitute.co.za/research/africa/">diagnosis</a> that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>(the African middle class) has grown by over 240% in just over a decade, and the bank defines 15 million households as now being middle class.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The narrow focus of the study is guided by a particular interest and echoes a poorly informed narrative about the structure of societies in Africa. It is void of any class related analysis and offers little bearing on reality. People are seen only as consumers with no political relevance. </p>
<p>The study was done by the University of Cape Town’s Unilever Institute of Strategic Marketing and the global market research company <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/en">IPSOS</a> over 18 months in ten cities – Abidjan, Accra, Addis Ababa, Douala, Dar es Salaam, Kano, Lagos, Nairobi, Luanda and Lusaka. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/english-releases/sub-saharan-middle-class-worth-over-400-million-per-day-300467335.html">It defines</a> as middle class someone who has a daily income of between USD$4 and USD$70. He or she also has a disposable income; is employed or is running a business or studying at college; and has some secondary school education. According to this criteria, a whopping 60% of the urban population surveyed fall into this definition of middle class. </p>
<p>The researchers conclude that those who qualify as middle class have an average income of USD$12 a day and an average household income of USD$17 a day. Of these, a third had a full time job, while many ran mainly informal businesses.</p>
<p>According to the study, an estimated 100 million people outside South Africa have an aggregated spending power of more than USD$400 million a day. </p>
<p>It’s clear that the research is motivated by economic interests, targeting the so-called middle class as the object of desire for retailers. As the head of the institute <a href="http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/print-version/sub-saharan-africa-middle-class-represents-r13tr-a-month-market-2017-05-19">explained</a>, the core of the interest in the estimated ZAR1.3 trillion-a-month market was</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a better understanding of the consumer landscape on the continent, (by exploring) aspirations, media consumption, buying patterns, brand relationships and much more (of such middle class).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Similar interests by the private sector exist in business circles beyond the continent. Large companies paid US$1160 and small ones US$510 to gain insights into the investment opportunities at a recent <a href="http://marketing.business-sweden.se/acton/media/28818/mea-summit-september-2017">“Middle East and Africa Summit”</a> in Stockholm. The second day was devoted to sub-Saharan Africa, which was described as having</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a bulging middle class hungry for inclusion and more sophisticated consumer demands.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Such approaches perpetuate the original hype over the discovery of the emerging middle classes in the global South, defined in terms of higher living standards. They are measured on consumption and lifestyle related to Western products and status symbols. But no insights are offered into how being middle class could be understood in a social context. This would include status and awareness as well as the political choices people make. </p>
<p>This would require a different, analytically much more ambitious grasp of the economic and political realities in African cities and indeed wider societies.</p>
<h2>The fight back</h2>
<p>In the meantime, scholars in a variety of academic disciplines have started to critically explore the middle class notion. They properly investigate its meaning and definition. This is important because a <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03056244.2016.1245183">middle class debate</a> reduced purely to the exploration of consumer habits can only be used for self-serving purposes. </p>
<p>In contrast, the new scholarly efforts put an African middle class debate into more meaningful perspectives. They offer a deeper analysis of cultural factors and identities, consciousness, social positioning and relations to other groups as well as institutions and the state. They are on their way to a proper class analysis and the policy options and implications by the social group or groups in formation. </p>
<p>The challenge is to look beyond the superficial number crunching that defines a middle class in purely income and expenditure figures, void of any further analysis of other <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/the-rise-of-africas-middle-class/">relevant factors</a>.</p>
<p>Such apolitical perspectives tend to put an ideological smokescreen around socio-economic processes. These rest on the assumption that relatively high economic growth rates suggest “progress” and “development”. Meanwhile, little changes in the daily lives of most people. Crumbs from the table of the haves don’t lift them out of a fragile socio-economic habitat bordering on poverty. Many urban and rural people continue to exist in utter destitution.</p>
<h2>Social change</h2>
<p>Engaging with such challenges, exploring how being middle class could be understood and mobilised for social change, would require a different analytical grasp of the socio-economic and political realities in African societies.</p>
<p>Presumably, such different research findings would most likely not be of interest to the business. But, the more socio-politically motivated analyses might contribute towards raising awareness of the class structures perpetuated. These are not fundamentally changed by a growing number of consumers, who are able to buy goods in the shopping malls and enjoy a “Western” lifestyle.</p>
<p>Rather, the advocacy and promotion of social justice and equality based on truly transformative social policies with deeper redistributive effects, could in the long run create a much larger and more sustainable market.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85942/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henning Melber is the editor of The Rise of Africa’s Middle Class: <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/the-rise-of-africas-middle-class/">http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/the-rise-of-africas-middle-class/</a></span></em></p>Scholars have started to investigate what it really means to be middle class in Africa.Henning Melber, Extraordinary Professor, Department of Political Sciences, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/813662017-08-13T08:40:46Z2017-08-13T08:40:46ZThe African middle class matters: but not for the reasons commonly put forward<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181465/original/file-20170808-16039-13cbs39.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The debate about Africa's middle class has largely ignored earlier analyses on African elites.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>These days the African middle class is widely discussed as a phenomenon considered indicative of social change.</p>
<p>But a great deal of the debate hasn’t been very well informed. For a long time contributions lacked a rigorous analysis, failing to examine the so-called middle class in terms of its potential as a proper class. People involved in the debate hardly bothered to engage with the more methodological aspects of the analysis of classes, which has a long tradition in social sciences and should be an integral part of any analysis.</p>
<p>Most problematic was the fiddling with figures, which classified people according to a minimum income as middle class. This is clearly not a very sensible way to approach proper class definition. It puts almost exclusive emphasis on financial and monetary aspects. But professional and social status, cultural norms and lifestyle related attributes as well as political orientation(s) and influence were often ignored. Where they were considered, it was often only in passing.</p>
<p>The debate largely ignored earlier analyses on African elites. It promoted the assumption that the middle class(es) are a positive ingredient for the development of and in African societies. </p>
<p>But such optimism is unhelpful both in terms of the potential economic role of these loosely defined middle classes, as well as the expectations about their political relevance.</p>
<p>In the meantime that’s started to change. Scholars from various disciplines related to African Studies are gaining the upper hand and claiming ownership. <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/the-rise-of-africas-middle-class/">New publications</a> testify to increasingly concerted efforts to respond with different and more nuanced perspectives.</p>
<p>These engagements offer insights based on more than lofty generalisations void of any social realities on the ground. Rather, the case studies test some of the assumptions and are able to portrait existing identities and practices of social segments of societies, which might be considered as middle class - or not. </p>
<p>So then, what class is the middle class?</p>
<h2>Caution required</h2>
<p>What is lumped together as middle classes represent at best an opaque awareness – if not about themselves (in the plural) – then at least about society and their position, aims and aspirations. Such ambiguity explains the different political and social orientations of members of a middle class, their different roles and positions in social struggles and their difference in interests.</p>
<p>The conclusions seem to suggest that there is no social force in the making, which by status and definition would indeed be the torch bearer for more democracy, participation, human rights, social equality and redistribution of wealth beyond benefiting just the group. One might call this a class interest, shared by many members of these middle classes across the continent. </p>
<p>But depending on the circumstances, ethnicity, pigmentation and other criteria (not least religion) matter at least as much as (at best) diffuse class awareness.</p>
<p>This should not stand in the way of continued interest in this species called middle class, which at a closer look is not as new as some contributions to the wider debate suggest. After all, there were always some middle layers of societies with a set of differing interests and orientations – only that their visibility and size in African countries seems to have increased lately.</p>
<p>But we should be much more cautious about providing simplified and sweeping explanations about the scope for potential social and political reforms and the impact on transformation of societies these middle classes are able – or willing – to promote.</p>
<p>After all, it is neither the middle class(es) nor even the upper fifth of the income pyramid that has any influence on the distribution of wealth in societies. They too are at the receiving end. </p>
<p>It is indeed the top decimal if not the top 5% or an even smaller fraction that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/profile/andy-sumner">drives inequality</a>, and it is these haves that have grasped the steering wheel. Their forms of appropriation and enrichment are the ultimate determinants of the scope and limit of poverty reduction by means of redistributive measures in favour of those in the bottom half of society.</p>
<p>To understand inequalities and the mechanisms of their reproduction, the motto coined by University of Cambridge economist <a href="http://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/people/emeritus/jgp5">Gabriel Palma </a> is appropriate. He points to the decisive impact of the wealthy segment of societies as regards growing inequalities on a global scale and <a href="http://www.networkideas.org/featart/mar2011/Palma.pdf">concludes</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s the share of the rich, stupid.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One is tempted to suspect that the middle class(es) hype seeks to propose a historical mission of these social layers in terms of future perspectives. But, in the light of the real (also material and political) power relations and structures of societies and the global economy, they are never able to live up to this mission.</p>
<p>Despite this sobering conclusion, the current engagement with the phenomenon called the African middle class(es) is anything but obsolete. Independent of their size, they signify modified social relations in African societies, which indeed deserve attention and rigorous analysis – with the emphasis on the latter.</p>
<p><em>These edited extracts are from the Introduction and Conclusion of Henning Melber (ed.), <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/the-rise-of-africas-middle-class/">The Rise of Africa’s Middle Class</a>: Myths, Realities and Critical Engagements.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81366/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henning Melber does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>We should be wary of simplified and sweeping explanations about the scope for potential social and political reforms the middle classes can promote.Henning Melber, Extraordinary Professor, Department of Political Sciences, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/777062017-05-15T08:19:10Z2017-05-15T08:19:10ZShifting the tax burden to middle-income earners will undermine jobs and growth<p>The government’s idea of raising the Medicare levy, while also removing the 2% budget deficit levy on incomes above A$180,000, is less “transformational” and more signature Liberal policy. It shifts the tax burden towards middle income earners, as opposed to Labor’s plan to direct higher tax rates towards higher income earners. </p>
<p>Rather than introducing a simple flat rate rise of 0.5% in the marginal tax rate across all taxpayers, the government has chosen to increase the Medicare levy. The reason lies in the fact that the levy contains the equivalent of a low-income tax offset due to the <a href="https://search.informit.org/documentSummary;dn=703678289981654;res=IELBUS">phasing out of the low-income exemption</a>. </p>
<p>For example, in the current financial year, the thresholds for the phasing out of the Medicare levy exemption is A$21,665 for singles and A$36,541 (plus A$3,356 for each dependent child/student) for families. At these thresholds, tax rates rise by the rate of the withdrawal of the exemption, which works out to be 8% (calculated as 10% less the 2% Medicare levy rate). </p>
<p>In the case of a two-child family, this means an 8% rise in the marginal tax rate at an income from A$43,253, to an upper income limit of A$51,803. If a Medicare levy increase of 0.5% were introduced in the current tax year, the upper income limit for the higher marginal tax rate would rise to A$54,066. </p>
<p>In combining a rise in the Medicare levy with the removal of the budget deficit levy, the government is therefore proposing a rise in marginal tax rates across a wide band of middle incomes and a marginal tax rate cut for the top. </p>
<p>This direction of tax reform is a continuation of the incremental shift in the overall tax burden towards middle income earners over recent decades. And because the threshold for the Medicare levy exemption is based on family income, the reform will reinforce the move towards higher effective tax rates on low income second earners in a family.</p>
<p>This shift in the tax burden from top to middle income earners, and to middle income families, will undermine aggregate demand and, in turn, “jobs and growth” in the future. </p>
<p>In contrast to the government’s policy, Labor’s policy limits the rise in the Medicare levy to incomes above the top two bracket points and retains the budget deficit levy. Raising taxes on top incomes is not only a fairer policy, but a more efficient one in the conventional economic sense. </p>
<p>The impact of taxes on hours worked declines as earnings get higher, and has close to no effect on <a href="https://www.springerprofessional.de/en/optimal-taxation-and-top-incomes/10858524">the hours worked by those with top incomes</a>. And by avoiding higher taxes on second family earners, Labor’s policy should have a less negative effect on second earner hours of work and therefore the tax base. </p>
<p>The government’s and Labor’s tax reforms therefore represent very different policies.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77706/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Patricia Apps has previously received ARC grants. </span></em></p>With its recent budget changes, the government is proposing a rise in marginal tax rates across a wide band of middle incomes and a marginal tax rate cut for the top.Patricia Apps, Professor of Public Economics, Faculty of Law, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/763652017-04-23T10:20:43Z2017-04-23T10:20:43ZIt’s time to lift the ideological haze in debates about Africa’s middle class<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166142/original/file-20170420-20050-7nf56g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The middle classes in the Global South gained growing attention since the turn of the century, mainly through their rapid ascendancy in the Asian emerging economies. A side effect of the economic growth during these ‘fat years’ was a relative increase of monetary income for a growing number of <a href="http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2015/10/04/world-bank-forecasts-global-poverty-to-fall-below-10-for-first-time-major-hurdles-remain-in-goal-to-end-poverty-by-2030">households</a>.</p>
<p>This also benefited some lower income groups in resource-rich African economies. Many among these crossed the defined poverty levels, which were raised in late 2015 from US$ 1.25 a person a day to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/nov/01/global-poverty-is-worse-than-you-think-could-you-live-on-190-a-day">US$ 1.90</a>. As some economists had suggested, from as little as US$2 they were considered as entering the <a href="https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/4013/WPS4816.pdf">“middle class”</a>. </p>
<p>The ominous term was rising like a phoenix from the ashes to characterise this trend. It added another label to the packaging of a <a href="https://www.socialeurope.eu/2013/11/neoliberal-discourse-learning/">neo-liberal discourse</a>. By emphasising the free market paradigm as creating the best opportunities for all, it suggests that everyone benefits from a <a href="https://global.britannica.com/topic/neoliberalism">laissez-faire economy</a>.</p>
<p>But the middle class concept remained vague and limited to number crunching. The minimum threshold for entering a so-called middle class in monetary terms was critically vulnerable to a setback into impoverishment. After all, one sixth of the world’s population has to make a fragile living on US$ 2 to 3 a day.</p>
<p>The African Development Bank played a defining role in promoting the debate. Using the US$2 benchmark, it declared some 300 million Africans (about a third of the continent’s population) as <a href="http://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/Documents/Publications/The%20Middle%20of%20the%20Pyramid_The%20Middle%20of%20the%20Pyramid.pdf">being middle class</a> in 2011. A year later it expanded its guesstimates to 300 million to 500 million. It also set them up as being very important.</p>
<p>Such monetary acrobatics aside, the analytical deficit which characterises such classification is seriously problematic. The so-called middle class appears to be a “muddling class”. Rigorously explored differentiation remained largely absent – not to mention any substantial class analysis. Professional activities, social status, cultural, ethnic or religious affinities or lifestyle as well as political orientations were hardly (if at all) considered.</p>
<p>But lived experiences matter if one is in search of how to define a middle class as an array of collective identities. Such necessary debate has in the meantime arrived in <a href="https://globalmiddleclasses.wordpress.com/2017/01/11/the-middle-class-in-africa-comparative-perspectives-and-lived-experiences/#more-259">African studies</a>. And the claim to ownership is also reflected in a just published <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/the-rise-of-africas-middle-class/%20and%20https://www.zedbooks.net/shop/book/the-rise-of-africas-middle-class/">volume</a> that documents the need to deconstruct the mystification of the middle class being declared as the torchbearers of progress and development.</p>
<h2>Politics, economic growth and the middle class</h2>
<p>As alerted in a paper by <a href="https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/wp2014-101.pdf">UNU-WIDER</a>, a new middle class as a meaningful social actor does require a collective identity in pursuance of common interests. Once upon a time this was called <a href="http://study.com/academy/lesson/karl-marx-theory-of-class-consciousness-and-false-consciousness.html">class-consciousness</a>, based on a “class in itself” while acting as a “class for itself”. After all, which “middle” is occupied by an African “middle class”, if this is not positioned also in terms of class awareness and behaviour?</p>
<p>Politically such middle classes seem not as democratic as many of those singing their praises assume. Middle classes have shown ambiguities - ranging from politically progressive engagement to a status-quo oriented, conservative approach to policies (if being political at all). African realities are not different.</p>
<p>In South Africa, the only consistency of the black middle class in historical perspective is its political inconsistency, as political scientist Roger Southall has <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0022278X14000445">suggested</a>. They are no more likely to hold democratic values than other black South Africans. In fact, they are more likely to want government to secure higher order needs such as proper service delivery, infrastructure and rule of law according to their <a href="https://theconversation.com/survey-sheds-light-on-who-marched-against-president-zuma-and-why-76271">living circumstances</a> rather than basic, survival needs.</p>
<p>It remains dubious that middle classes in Africa by their sheer existence promote economic growth. Their increase was mainly a limited result of the trickle down effects of the resource based economic growth rates during the first decade of the 21st century since then in decline. This had hardly economic potential stimulating productive investment that contributes towards sustainable economic growth.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166094/original/file-20170420-20093-1h9tmoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166094/original/file-20170420-20093-1h9tmoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166094/original/file-20170420-20093-1h9tmoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166094/original/file-20170420-20093-1h9tmoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166094/original/file-20170420-20093-1h9tmoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166094/original/file-20170420-20093-1h9tmoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166094/original/file-20170420-20093-1h9tmoc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Doubt shrouds claims that a growing middle class benefits the poor.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Mike Hutchings</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There’s also little evidence of any correlation between economic growth and social progress, as a working paper of the IMF <a href="https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2013/wp1353.pdf">concludes</a>. While during the “fat years” the poor partly became a little less poor, the rich got much richer. Even the African Development Bank admits that the income discrepancies as measured by the Gini-coefficient have increased, while six among the ten most unequal countries in the world <a href="https://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/Documents/Project-and-Operations/ADER%202012%20(En).pdf">are in Africa</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.cgdev.org/expert/nancy-birdsall">Nancy Birdsall</a>, president emeritus of the Centre for Global Development, is among the most prominent advocates and protagonists of the middle class. She argues in support of a middle class rather than a pro-poor developmental orientation. But even she concedes that a sensible political economy analysis needs to differentiate between the rich with political leverage and <a href="http://www.sabc.co.za/news/a/9a5242004ce34374a4d9bf271348019a/Africa%E2%80%99s-rising-middle-class:-time-to-sort-out-fact-from-fiction-20162505">the rest</a>.</p>
<p>She remains nevertheless adamant that the middle class is an ingredient for good governance. This is based on her assumption that continued economic growth reduces inequalities. She further hypothesises that a growing middle class has a greater interest in an accountable government and supports a social contract, which taxes it as an investment into collective public goods to the benefit of <a href="http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ejdr/journal/v27/n2/full/ejdr20153a.html">also the poor</a>. <a href="http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ejdr/journal/v27/n2/pdf/ejdr20153a.pdf">Dream on</a>!</p>
<h2>Time to lift the ideological haze</h2>
<p>It remains necessary to put the record straight and lift the ideological haze. Already the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development <a href="http://hdr.undp.org/en/2013-report">2013 report</a>, which also promoted the <a href="http://d-nb.info/1045939153/34">middle class hype</a>, predicted that 80% of middle classes would come from the global South by 2030, but only 2% from Sub-Saharan Africa. </p>
<p>Recent assessments claim that it’s not the middle of African societies which expands, but the lower and higher social groups.</p>
<p>According to a report by the <a href="http://www.pewglobal.org/2015/07/08/a-global-middle-class-is-more-promise-than-reality/">Pew Research Centre</a> only a few African countries had a meaningful increase of those in the middle-income category. </p>
<p>And the Economist, which earlier shifted its doomsday visions of a “Hopeless Continent” towards <a href="https://www.howwemadeitinafrica.com/how-the-economist-changed-its-tune-on-africa/">“Africa Rising”</a> and the <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21572377-african-lives-have-already-greatly-improved-over-past-decade-says-oliver-august">“Continent of Hope”</a>, now concludes that Africans are mainly <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21676774-africans-are-mainly-rich-or-poor-not-middle-class-should-worry">rich or poor but not middle class</a>.</p>
<p>Fortunately, the debate has created sufficient awareness among scholars to explore the fact and fiction of the assumed <a href="https://www.giga-hamburg.de/en/publication/africas-new-middle-class">transformative power</a> of a middle class. This also includes the need to be sensitive towards ideological smokescreens which try to make us believe that a middle class is the cure. In reality, little has changed when it comes to leverage and control over social and political affairs. </p>
<p>The current engagement with the African middle class phenomenon is nevertheless anything but obsolete. Independent of their numbers, middle class members signify modified social relations. These deserve attention and analysis with the emphasis on social relations. </p>
<p>Cambridge Economist <a href="https://newleftreview.org/II/78/goran-therborn-class-in-the-21st-century">Göran Therborn</a> stresses that discourse on class is always of social relevance. The boom of the middle class debate is therefore a remarkable symptom of our decade. Social class will remain a category of central importance, and bringing the class back in can do no harm.</p>
<p><em>Henning Melber is the author of <a href="https://www.zedbooks.net/shop/book/the-rise-of-africas-middle-class/">The Rise of Africa’s Middle Class</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76365/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henning Melber does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The middle class concept in Africa has remained vague and limited to number crunching. The minimum threshold for entering it in monetary terms was critically vulnerable to a setback into poverty.Henning Melber, Extraordinary Professor, Department of Political Sciences, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/583462016-04-29T04:26:43Z2016-04-29T04:26:43ZSouth Africa must open student funding to public scrutiny<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119951/original/image-20160425-22352-12qvkeu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Most South Africans need serious financial support to make it through university.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GCIS/Flickr</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa’s government is planning a <a href="http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/education/2016/04/13/universities-hinder-students-from-accessing-funds-says-nsfas">major overhaul</a> of its student funding system. This comes in the wake of <a href="https://theconversation.com/fee-protests-point-to-a-much-deeper-problem-at-south-african-universities-49456">protests</a> at the country’s universities that saw students successfully freeze fee increases for the 2016 academic year.</p>
<p>Government aid has been available to poor students for a number of years through its <a href="http://www.nsfas.org.za/content/mission.html">National Student Financial Aid Scheme</a> (NSFAS), which falls under the Department of Higher Education and Training. But the scheme’s definition of “poor” – a family income of less than R120,000 (about US$8,287) per year – has left the country’s “missing middle” stranded. These young people make up the bulk of the school-leaving population each year. Their parents are teachers, nurses, police and other civil servants whose annual income (<a href="http://www.unisa.ac.za/contents/faculties/ems/docs/press429.pdf">on average</a> between R151,728 and R363,930) is above the NSFAS threshold but not high enough to afford university fees. As Rhodes University vice-chancellor Dr Sizwe Mabizela has <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-south-africa-university-is-open-to-rich-and-poor-but-what-about-the-missing-middle-36801">pointed out</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This means you have to be desperately poor or wealthy to afford higher education in South Africa.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The proposed overhaul will see NSFAS’ household income threshold rise to R500,000. This should see many more deserving students get a shot at a university education, though where the university places will come from in an overstretched system is entirely unclear. </p>
<p>At the same time, government plans to centralise student funding. Universities will lose their power to allocate student funds, and instead NSFAS will control student funding directly.</p>
<p>To date, universities have managed their own NSFAS funds. This has been marred by <a href="http://www.dispatchlive.co.za/news/student-funds-used-for-fort-hare-salaries/">financial mismanagement</a> and <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/nzimande-to-probe-nsfas-corruption-allegations-20151112">allegations of fraud and nepotism</a> at a number of universities.</p>
<p>Such changes seem positive. However, there is nothing to guarantee that these reforms will be effective in supporting students. There appear to be four main hurdles to ensuring that student funding is equitable and efficient, which we will explore in this article. Crucially, these reforms will only work if student funding is opened to public scrutiny and participation.</p>
<h2>Hurdles to equitable student funding</h2>
<p>So what’s holding student funding back?</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Government capacity: how will the Department of Higher Education implement a complex grant of this magnitude given its other priority functions? In 2014, universities administered R9 billion in NSFAS funding to more than <a href="http://www.nsfas.org.za/content/reports/NSFAS%20AR%202014-15.pdf">400,000 students</a>. How will NSFAS build the structures and the competencies to go from managing zero students to managing 400,000? </p>
<p>And if universities are mismanaging relatively small pots of funding, what is to prevent a national office from mismanaging a much larger central fund, which is more complex and difficult to oversee? Indeed, NSFAS has struggled to both <a href="http://www.sabc.co.za/news/a/42d741804ba833bea363f7b10d544352/NSFAS-probe-late-payments-of-students%E2%80%99-allowances-20161202">disburse funds</a> and <a href="http://www.financialmail.co.za/features/2015/06/25/nsfas-brakes-on-the-free-ride">recover debt</a>. </p></li>
<li><p>Student care: When universities manage NSFAS funds, students have direct access to financial aid services and counselling related to the process. This is important because most young people entering universities are the first in their <a href="https://www.enca.com/south-africa/student-dropout-rate-high">immediate families to do so</a>. They need care and support to navigate university life and student funding.</p>
<p>How will NSFAS provide such “care services” from a central office and ensure that students are not further alienated by red tape?</p></li>
<li><p>Local knowledge and decision-making: The academics and support staff at each institution have local, particular knowledge of students’ strengths and weaknesses and the difficulties of each course. They sometimes admit students who are failing on paper, understanding that in practice and with sufficient support such students will succeed. Will the central management of student funding affect universities’ admission and selection criteria? Will deserving students be excluded, or will these students be forced into courses that they do not want to or cannot do? </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/university-autonomy-insights-from-tanzania-uganda-and-nigeria-50535">Institutional autonomy is central</a> to the functioning of universities as a critical space. If the government begins to dictate who should be allowed access to universities, this autonomy will be lost. </p></li>
<li><p>Trade-offs in funding: There are two ways to fund more students. Either university costs go down or the national higher education budget goes up. If additional money for NSFAS comes from within the existing higher education budget, then university costs will have <a href="http://businesstech.co.za/news/general/102010/what-you-need-to-know-about-university-fees-in-south-africa/">to go down</a>. This has enormous implications for quality. </p>
<p>Austerity measures, in the form of voluntary retrenchments, are already being implemented in some universities. The casualisation of academic staff is in full swing, with more than 50% of academics in South Africa working on a <a href="http://www.che.ac.za/focus_areas/higher_education_data/2013/staffing">contract basis</a>. How can these processes be squared with student demands for a complete overhaul of the curriculum, the insourcing of workers and support for black academics?</p>
<p>On the other hand, the national budget for higher education could increase. South Africa spends only 0.71% of its gross domestic product on higher education, compared with <a href="http://chet.org.za/books/doctoral-education-south-africa">double or more spent by countries</a> like India, the US, Australia, Ghana and Malaysia. But next year there will probably be less money in the budget. The economy is stagnant and the price of borrowing will likely increase substantially if South Africa’s credit rating is cut to <a href="http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/businesstimes/2016/04/20/SAs-credit-rating-will-probably-be-cut-to-junk-this-year">junk status</a>. Where will the money for an increase in NSFAS funds come from?</p></li>
</ol>
<h2>Public scrutiny is key</h2>
<p>These hurdles can only be overcome if citizens have the information and the right to participate in setting the budget and overseeing NSFAS. At the moment the process is almost entirely limited to a small number of government and university bureaucrats. </p>
<p>The first step to deepening democratic participation would be for Higher Education Minister Dr Blade Nzimande to provide full information about the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTlsjUd0doQ">forensic audit to probe alleged malpractices</a> in NSFAS. There is no transparency about who is carrying out the audit, what their terms of reference are, expected penalties and remedial action, or even the deadline for findings. </p>
<p>The second step is for NSFAS to make public its detailed financial records so that citizens can identify delays in distributing NSFAS funds and how debt is recovered. National Treasury has just opened up the country’s entire municipal budget dataset to <a href="http://www.codebridge.co.za/dataquest.htm">public scrutiny and participation</a> in line with South Africa’s international commitments to <a href="http://www.wri.org/blog/2012/08/open-government-partnership-african-nations-commit-new-levels-transparency">open data</a>. The Department of Higher Education can and should become an innovator and open government data to democratic oversight. </p>
<p>The third step is for citizens to participate in setting the national budget. Should our universities cut their costs and, if so, should it be staffing costs? Should the higher education budget be increased and, if so, where should this money come from? Why does the government spend <a href="http://ewn.co.za/Media/2016/02/24/Budget-2016-at-a-glance">three times as much</a> on the security cluster as on higher education?</p>
<p>The proposed student funding reforms can make higher education more equitable and sustainable. But this will only happen if NSFAS is subject to public scrutiny, participation and oversight.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/58346/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Temwa Moyo receives funding from DHET </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nimi Hoffmann and Sioux McKenna do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Student funding processes must be opened up to public scrutiny and participation if they’re to succeed.Temwa Moyo, PhD Candidate, Rhodes UniversityNimi Hoffmann, PhD student, Rhodes UniversitySioux McKenna, Professor and Higher Education Studies PhD Co-ordinator, Rhodes UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/390232015-04-22T10:03:25Z2015-04-22T10:03:25ZAfrica’s destiny depends on building a vibrant middle class<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/78831/original/image-20150421-17614-106k4ub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">African nations can look to Nigeria and Tanzania for recent examples of smart policies that boost the middle class.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flag map via www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The global financial crisis felled many nations and companies, leading to the collapse of banks and recessions in the biggest economies in the world. But most African countries passed through the storm without experiencing much of a blip. </p>
<p>Many factors deserve credit for Africa’s ability to steer through the credit crunch largely unhurt. One notable factor was the growing number of small businesses in all sectors of the economy across the continent – and more micro-finance institutions to serve them – that helped propel growth and avoid disaster when bigger companies lagged. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, these businesses, such as small-scale local cooperatives in agriculture in the Democratic Republic of Congo, were set up merely as “survival strategies” with a very limited framework. The initiatives were not designed to ensure long-term economic sustainability. Many were intended only to help economies shoulder through the crisis, not spur growth. </p>
<p>But in reality these policies have shown that Africa’s economic growth and development rely and will continue to rely on the fate of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) – which are too often dismissed as “informal economic activities” that deserve little attention. </p>
<h2>Reliable partners</h2>
<p>Tanzania, Zambia and Kenya have taken the lead in proving that small businesses can be reliable partners.</p>
<p>For instance in Tanzania, up to 75% of banks <a href="http://www.consultancyafrica.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1120:smes-in-africa-growth-despite-constraints&catid=82:african-industry-a-business&Itemid=266">offer</a> substantial loans to SMEs, in contrast to some countries where bankers are still reluctant to trust them. </p>
<p>But small businesses can’t thrive without a strong and growing middle class, something most African countries continue to lack. An increasing body of research shows the link between a vibrant middle class and a healthy economy. It was a key ingredient that <a href="http://courses.wcupa.edu/jones/his311/notes/mid-clas.htm">fueled</a> European prosperity throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. </p>
<p>Of course, a thriving middle class is necessary for more than just driving economic growth. It’s the only way to lift hundreds of millions of Africans out of abject poverty through inclusive social and economic policies that work for all. African governments must do more to build on the recent successes in increasing entrepreneurship and to pursue policies that lift more of their citizens out of poverty, where too many of them reside. </p>
<h2>Path out of poverty</h2>
<p>Sub-Saharan Africa alone has an estimated 218 million residents living in extreme poverty on less than $1 a day, that’s more than one out of every four people. </p>
<p>Beyond the humanitarian calamity, it means a significant share of the population can’t afford to buy commodities at market prices – and can’t help sustain small businesses. Finding a way to lift more of these people out of poverty will increase the size of the consumer market, foster more sustainable entrepreneurial activity and bolster local and regional economic growth. </p>
<p>In fact, a middle class and small businesses go hand and hand, each feeding off of and building the other. One cannot survive and thrive without the other. </p>
<h2>On the road to growth</h2>
<p>Some progress has already been made. </p>
<p>Africa’s middle class <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-business/african-and-mideast-business/africas-middle-class-boom-is-real-study-shows-and-its-gaining-speed/article20127909/">has tripled</a> over the past 14 years as its 11 biggest economies have grown tenfold in the period, according to a study conducted by Standard Bank. </p>
<p>Almost 15 million households are now deemed middle class, up from 4.6 million in 2000, with Nigeria leading the way and east African countries lagging behind. The bank forecast that the middle classes in those 11 countries will swell by another 25 million by 2030. Almost a third of all middle class households by then will be in Nigeria, which is finally diversifying away from oil and growing its telecommunication sector, film industry (Nollyhood) and other segments at a grassroots level.</p>
<p>But that still represents just a fraction of the 1 billion Africans – projected to reach 1.9 billion by 2050 – and includes people living on just $15 a day. </p>
<p>In order to capitalize on the demographics and keep the pace of economic growth high, governments need to implement strategies that enhance entrepreneurship, the capabilities of SMEs and the middle class. </p>
<h2>Examples of success</h2>
<p>Nigeria leads the way with policies and government programs such as the <a href="http://allafrica.com/stories/201408140731.html">Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Fund</a> implemented by the country’s central bank. While its main purpose was to support small businesses, it has helped build a Nigerian middle class as well. </p>
<p>South Africa has also succeeded in implementing national policies that promote small-and medium-size enterprises, facilitate economic inclusion while establishing a strong and sustainable middle class. </p>
<p>One of these is the Black Economic Empowerment program, created in 2003 to relieve the inequalities caused by apartheid and facilitate more economic inclusion. It demonstrates the importance of tailoring initiatives at groups that have been marginalized. </p>
<p>Statistics show that there has been <a href="http://www.mistra.org.za/Library/ConferencePaper/Documents/Middle%20Class%20in%20South%20Africa-Significance,%20role%20and%20impact.pdf">dramatic growth</a> in the size of the middle class since apartheid ended in 1994. Back then, South Africa’s middle class was dominated by whites at 69.1%, while Indians made up 18.5%, mixed race or “Coloureds” comprised 9.1% and Africans just 3.3%. Today, Africans make up 51% of the middle class, followed by whites at 34%, Coloureds at 9% and Indians at 6%. </p>
<p>But that only tells part of the story. While the country’s wealth is being shared more equitably among its many ethnic groups, the overall middle class <a href="http://www.essa2013.org.za/fullpaper/essa2013_2562.pdf">remains</a> relatively small at about 17% of the population. That’s up from 8.1% two decades ago, but more needs to be done. </p>
<h2>Shifting policies?</h2>
<p>And here’s where policies that foster thriving entrepreneurship and a growing middle class go hand in hand. To build the former, governments need to implement policies such as project financing and establish skills training centers, which will then support the latter. Small- and medium-sized enterprises are the foundation for a strong middle class. </p>
<p>Too many government policies have instead focused on luring large multinational companies. While they do contribute to overall gross domestic product, <a href="http://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/Worldbank/document/LAC/LatinAmericanEntrepreneurs.pdf">research</a> including some data from the World Bank have shown that these multinationals do <a href="http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTARD/Resources/sleeping_giant.pdf">little</a> to <a href="http://www.oecd.org/investment/investmentfordevelopment/1959815.pdf">facilitate</a> local economic development. Governments have argued that the benefits of hosting these companies will trickle down and alleviate poverty. But the <a href="http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/the-resource-curse-why-africas-oil-riches-dont-trickle-down-to-africans">evidence</a> suggests otherwise. For instance, the sharp contrast between multimillion oil facilities around the Niger Delta and the high level of poverty in nearby rural communities exemplifies the limitation if not failure of the trickle-down economic policy.</p>
<h2>Permanent vulnerability</h2>
<p>This focus on luring a few large companies has also tended to make these economies over reliant on a single sector of the economy. </p>
<p>Nigeria’s economy, for example, has experienced phenomenal growth in recent years but is now at risk because of plunging oil prices. </p>
<p>This dependency on one or few economic activities has put many African countries in a position of permanent vulnerability. These economies need a broad base to create more sustainable growth for the long term. </p>
<p>In order to avoid such economic vulnerabilities, and in order to build a strong middle-class economy, it is imperative that African governments find ways of formalizing and integrating more small businesses into the “formal economy.”</p>
<p>Private initiatives need to be backed up by a strong political will to support small businesses with subsidies. Such practices will encourage local communities and investors to invest and work with local businesses and ultimately help build the middle class.</p>
<p>The middle class economy in Africa requires a multi-stakeholder approach that includes governments and private ventures. If the right policies are followed, investors will then know that the future and success of Africa’s economy are in Africa’s middle class and the small-and medium-sized enterprises it supports.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/39023/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yvan Yenda Ilunga does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Some countries in Africa have made great strides bolstering the middle class by supporting small businesses, but more needs to be done. Yvan Yenda Ilunga, Visiting Scholar in The Division of Global Affairs, Rutgers UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/370792015-02-03T05:12:07Z2015-02-03T05:12:07ZThe incredible shrinking – yet ever expanding – middle class<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70889/original/image-20150203-9202-q6y7p0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Who IS in the middle class?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/stephenmelkisethian/12395091884/in/photolist-jTj5YL-5z8FH3-dmfvG5-9qHjxF-5zd2gK-9pfxpG-9qLjph-83zxqq-81JzLb-81EsMc-9tLnAg-aozKE1-9poGGG-aaGdEH-6U2Ti5-9fVsaZ-7XpqD9-7XpqPU-atC8T5-9twVHT-9ntJuo-81JAH3-81JzpW-81JA6w-aupE7B-5AxixM-5zhjF7-9poGMj-5AxhXk-aB7ZcN-8367w1-8369Jd-aB7Y81-81FrFK-81FtLe-81JCL1-9pfveq-9ntHgw-5zhjtY-9nzj8q-9nzo2f-9nznAL-9nzjo7-9nwhNX-9j4KC7-9ky5pQ-7XprTJ-7XmcpP-7XmdtZ-9nqFEa">Stephen Melkisethian/Flickr via CC BY-ND</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>One of President Barack Obama’s main goals this year, as laid out in both his 2015 budget and State of the Union address, is to provide relief to the middle class. The divergent responses to two of his proposals – one involving paying for mortgages and the other saving for college – reveal a lot about the “middle class” in this country and illustrate why it has become so hard to really help that group.</p>
<p>Under the mortgage plan, the Federal Housing Administration agreed to reduce its mortgage insurance premiums by 0.5%. The plan, which is already in place, has been hailed as a way to help middle-class households buy homes more cheaply.</p>
<p>The other plan, in contrast, was <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/28/us/politics/obama-will-drop-proposal-to-end-529-college-savings-plans.html?_r=0">abandoned barely days</a> after it was floated due to stiff opposition from all sides. It would have ended the tax break for <a href="http://www.irs.gov/uac/529-Plans:-Questions-and-Answers">529 college</a> savings plans and plowed that money into tax credits more squarely aimed at the middle class. Intense and sustained opposition from Republicans, Democratic congressional leaders and upper-income families led the Obama administration to abruptly drop it. </p>
<h2>Doomed to fail</h2>
<p>Republicans lawmakers <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/push-to-tax-529-plans-stokes-debate-over-income-student-aid-1421958694">lambasted</a> the 529 proposal, even though it eliminated tax breaks rather than increased spending. State governments and financial entities who operate 529 plans attacked it largely because they worried that eliminating the break would effectively end the plans. And Democratic leaders and parents who invest in them also opposed the very idea, viewing it as an assault on, rather than relief for, the middle class. </p>
<p>While both of these proposals ostensibly targeted the middle class, the mortgage plan was lauded because its financial relief applies to all homeowners, regardless of how much they earned. The 529 proposal, by contrast, was doomed because of a fatal flaw: it actually tried to provide relief for just the middle class, carving it out by income.</p>
<p>The success of one and not the other was actually quite predictable. The mortgage proposal, though modest, was welcomed because it was designed to make it easier and cheaper for families to buy homes. Republicans, Democrats, Americans and the financial entities that benefit all agree that any plan that increases homeownership rates is good, even if most of the benefits go to higher-income households and barely reach the middle class.</p>
<p>Homeowners are <a href="http://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf">richer</a> than most, and the data show most taxpayers <a href="https://www.jct.gov/publications.html?func=startdown&id=4506">don’t benefit</a> from the deductions that target them. Still, <a href="https://theconversation.com/obamas-middle-class-economics-wheres-the-affordable-housing-36635">homeownership is touted</a> as a way to help middle-class households accumulate wealth.</p>
<h2>Ditto for 529s</h2>
<p>The same is true with 529 plans. College-savings tax breaks, like those supporting homeownership, disproportionately benefit higher-income households.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/bulletin/2012/pdf/scf12.pdf">Fewer than 3% of families</a> save for college using 529 plans, according to Federal Reserve data, and a 2012 Government Accountability Office report shows that most families who own such accounts <a href="http://www.gao.gov/assets/660/650759.pdf">are not lower- or middle-income</a>. The average income for families with the plan is <a href="http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/bulletin/2012/pdf/scf12.pdf">three times</a> that of those without them, according to the GAO report. Only 20% of account holders earn less than $75,000.</p>
<p>Since it’s the richest who have the largest accounts, most of the benefits of the tax break go to them. While the <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/push-to-tax-529-plans-stokes-debate-over-income-student-aid-1421958694">average account</a> has about $20,000 in it, <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Who-s-Saving-for-College-in/151347/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en">the accounts of the top 5%</a> average more than $106,000. Those for the next 5% average more than $30,000. Meanwhile, accounts of middle-income Americans have balances of about $8,000 and those of the poorest have only $3,000.</p>
<p>But neither Republicans nor Democrats seem to care whether 529 plans or the mortgage proposal helps middle-income households. Their willingness to disconnect income from class is probably because Americans generally do the same, identifying themselves in the middle regardless of how much they earn.</p>
<h2>The not poor, not rich class</h2>
<p>The “middle class” is an oft-used but poorly understood category that seems to be defined by who is not included rather than who should be. Indeed, the only people who clearly don’t belong in the middle class are the very poor and the really rich.</p>
<p>When Americans think of “class,” they seem to divide people into three groups: the poor (lower-class), the really rich (upper-class) and everybody else (middle-class). Given these groupings, the middle class includes both the “near poor” and the “not exactly rich,” like the higher-income families who invest in 529 plans.</p>
<p>The middle-class (as broadly defined) panicked when the 529 proposal was announced because of the risks it posed to their children’s futures. While the top 1% does not fret about how they will pay for their children’s college education, even parents who earn $150,000 worry because tuition rates <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-11-13/college-tuition-in-the-u-s-again-rises-faster-than-inflation">have been surging for years</a>, rising faster than incomes and financial aid. </p>
<p>Anxious parents who earn too much for their children to receive Pell grants and other aid, yet not enough to make lump sum payments, are painfully aware that their progeny must go to college to succeed. They also know that saddling them with several hundred-thousand dollars of debt to do so could cloud their futures. </p>
<p>A college degree is now a prerequisite to joining the middle class, and college-educated workers earn about <a href="http://stateofworkingamerica.org/chart/swa-wages-figure-4n-college-wage-premium/">twice as much</a> as high-school graduates. And, as Obama noted in his State of the Union, by the end of this decade two-thirds of new job openings in the next five years will require at least some college education, and virtually all jobs will require some type of post-secondary training.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70863/original/image-20150202-13708-nkkmjd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/70863/original/image-20150202-13708-nkkmjd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=694&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70863/original/image-20150202-13708-nkkmjd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=694&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70863/original/image-20150202-13708-nkkmjd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=694&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70863/original/image-20150202-13708-nkkmjd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=873&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70863/original/image-20150202-13708-nkkmjd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=873&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/70863/original/image-20150202-13708-nkkmjd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=873&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Feeling the squeeze.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Soon we’ll all be ‘middle class’</h2>
<p>The Obama Administration appears to have been blindsided by the vociferous opposition to the 529 proposal, which is somewhat understandable since the president was clearly correct in stating that few lower- or middle-income families would be harmed by it. The upper-income parents who objected felt they were being attacked, because they self-identify as being middle-class, not upper-class. And, compared with the top 1% of Americans who earn <a href="http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/numbers/displayatab.cfm?Docid=4175">more than $663,000</a>, they may just be right.</p>
<p>The success of the mortgage plan together with the failure of the 529 proposal reveal a lot about who is part of the middle-class in this country – and who thinks they are. Ever widening income inequality caused by the highest earners getting richer will mean more upper-income Americans likely will claim membership in the middle-class. </p>
<p>An expansive definition of the middle class will make it even harder to find politically palatable ways to target its true members, who are increasingly struggling just to make ends meet. So even as more people think they’re in the middle class, its actual membership will continue to shrink as long as the income and wealth gaps keep growing. And the amount of money the government is willing to spend on the true middle class will continue to shrink as well.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37079/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mechele Dickerson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>One of President Barack Obama’s main goals this year, as laid out in both his 2015 budget and State of the Union address, is to provide relief to the middle class. The divergent responses to two of his…Mechele Dickerson, Law professor, The University of Texas at AustinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/341562014-11-14T11:17:06Z2014-11-14T11:17:06ZGetting rid of Dapper Laughs and Julien Blanc is not enough if laddism continues to flourish<p>The world media cognoscenti have been on a crusade recently against a particular brand of misogyny. And their campaign has achieved some results. Controversial comedian Daniel O’Reilly just announced that he is <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/dapper-laughs-comedian-daniel-oreilly-to-retire-his-controversial-character-after-uk-tour-and-itv-shows-are-axed-9854890.html">retiring his “Dapper Laughs” character</a> after footage emerged of him on stage describing a woman in the audience as “gagging for a rape”. This incident sparked an online petition signed by 60,000 people calling on ITV2 to decommission his show – which the channel subsequently did – and his UK tour was also cancelled. </p>
<p>Campaigners are hoping a similar fate will befall <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/nov/10/julien-blanc-petition-urges-uk-deny-visa-pick-up-artist">Julien Blanc</a>, the US “pick up artist” whose seminars teach men to coerce women into sex. Blanc’s Australian tour was cut short after his visa was revoked in the wake of protests – an <a href="https://www.change.org/p/uk-home-office-deny-julien-blanc-a-uk-visa">online petition</a> is now urging the Home Office to deny him entry to the UK.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lBt3fr5viAE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Censorship?</h2>
<p>The furore in both these cases has prompted <a href="http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/death-to-dapper-behold-the-new-intolerance/16171#.VGHU6IusXb_">cries of censorship</a> and accusations that the “chattering classes” are using their political clout against working-class culture. The first gripe is based on a basic misunderstanding of free speech. O’Reilly and Blanc have the right to hold forth in any space which will have them, but their opponents are also entitled to voice opinions, and TV companies and other organisations are allowed to decide not to give them a pulpit. This hardly makes them Mary Whitehouse.</p>
<p>But there’s no doubt that attempts to deny people like this a platform allow them to <a href="https://www.change.org/p/facebook-do-not-censor-julien-blanc-do-not-deny-julien-blanc-a-uk-visa">describe themselves as victims</a> of “political correctness gone mad”. This bolsters their support and makes them appear much more credible than they actually are. Of course, it would be infinitely preferable if nobody watched Dapper Laughs or attended Blanc’s seminars in the first place – and we need to ask why they do.</p>
<p>Both <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/11/05/Beyond-Parody-How-Feminists-Are-Redefining-Hello-As-Sexual-Assault">defenders of</a> and <a href="http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/dapper-laughs---great-british-pisstaker">detractors from</a> contemporary laddism have claimed that it is inherently proletarian. This is a facile and classist interpretation of sexist behaviour – and it not only feeds reactionary caricatures of the privileged woman who swoons at a joke, it also lets middle-class men off scot free. </p>
<h2>The class war</h2>
<p>This is not a “culture clash” between the cultivated and the puerile classes – the class war is at work in representations of working-class men as crass, crude and more misogynistic than the rest. The fight against sexism has been caught up in other social and political antagonisms, like the viral catcalling video in the US that <a href="http://metro.co.uk/2014/10/30/100-catcalls-video-director-admits-editing-out-white-people-4928473/">edited out the white guys</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/12/pua-pick-up-artists-julien-blanc-dapper-laughs">Blanc’s “boot camps” cost almost $3,000</a> – a price certainly not attainable for those in lower-paying jobs. <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2014/oct/15/lad-culture-thrives-in-our-neoliberal-universities">“Lad culture”</a> at universities is often the preserve of those at the top of the heap – rugby lads, members of elite drinking societies and debate teams. </p>
<p>This type of laddism can probably trace its lineage to Oxford’s notorious <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/oxford-university-bullingdon-club-wed-4305702">Bullingdon Club</a>, recently immortalised in film in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2717860/">The Riot Club</a>. The Bullingdon’s membership has boasted David Cameron, Boris Johnson and other famous toffs. At their informal gatherings women have been made to whinny on all fours while men brandish hunting horns and whips. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64499/original/228tjd3k-1415895945.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64499/original/228tjd3k-1415895945.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64499/original/228tjd3k-1415895945.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64499/original/228tjd3k-1415895945.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64499/original/228tjd3k-1415895945.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64499/original/228tjd3k-1415895945.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64499/original/228tjd3k-1415895945.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Riot Club (2014).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Universal Pictures</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Hitting back</h2>
<p>The Bullingdon and Dapper Laughs lads are all part of a broad cultural misogyny which currently has enormous power. It is connected to recent <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/voices/2014/05/what-s-driving-new-sexism">economic and social trends</a> – recession, competition for jobs and resources and a backlash against increased gender equality. <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/24/everyday-sexism-vagenda-reviews-laura-bates-holly-baxter-rhiannon-lucy-cosslett">People have wondered</a> why the “new sexism” is particularly attractive to the young – it’s partly because social media provides it with a nourishing pit of primordial ooze, but it’s also because young people of all genders are coming of age in the jaws of a competitive, individualistic neoliberalism.</p>
<p>There’s a reason why, alongside the rape joke, the most ubiquitous slogan of contemporary laddism is “make me a sandwich”. It’s a constant tussle out there, and one that women are <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8420098/David-Willets-feminism-has-held-back-working-men.html">believed</a> to be winning. This means that some men feel the need to put them back in their place. </p>
<p>Gross sexism isn’t the only way to do that – women also face an ideology of “intensive motherhood” which makes us feel guilty if we can’t be <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/09/opinion/sunday/our-mommy-problem.html?_r=0">“all in, all the time”</a>, a <a href="http://observer.com/2007/07/the-new-victorians/">“New Victorianism”</a> which reclaims domesticity as the route to self-fulfilment, a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/oct/11/delusions-gender-sex-cordelia-fine">bombardment of “brain science”</a> arguing that men and women are indeed essentially different, and <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/mother-tongue/11210364/Criminalising-pregnant-mothers-who-drink-alcohol-will-turn-us-all-into-walking-wombs.html">renewed threats to reproductive rights</a>.</p>
<p>So the problem is much bigger than Dapper Laughs and Julien Blanc. Removing their platform to speak will not tackle it – we need to ask why people are listening and laughing in the first place. We all need to work together to create the kind of society in which the abuse of women is not hilarious. There are <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/nov/12/lad-culture-workshops-unversity-campuses-sexual-harassment">more positive models of masculinity</a> out there, which should be supported and nurtured more widely. Otherwise we will soon be petitioning against another Dapper Laughs – because people still think he’s funny.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34156/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alison Phipps has previously received a research grant from the National Union of Students for a qualitative study on women students' experiences of 'lad culture'. </span></em></p>The world media cognoscenti have been on a crusade recently against a particular brand of misogyny. And their campaign has achieved some results. Controversial comedian Daniel O’Reilly just announced that…Alison Phipps, Director of Gender Studies, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/332212014-10-27T05:53:26Z2014-10-27T05:53:26ZThe ‘racism talk’: how black middle-class parents are warning their children<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62725/original/hr3n298z-1414152536.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C8%2C991%2C866&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">We need to talk. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&search_tracking_id=EM-qZG-gprHWBXqkbqSXPQ&searchterm=black%20parents&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=71136817">Black mother and child via Danie Nel/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>One in three people in Britain describe themselves as being very or a little racially prejudiced, according to a recent <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27599401">British Social Attitudes Survey</a>. How are middle-class black families coping with this rise in prejudiced attitudes and preparing their children for a society marred by such discrimination?</p>
<p>We carried out <a href="http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415809825/">research</a> with professional families of black Caribbean heritage across England and explored how they navigate their children successfully through school. </p>
<p>Our findings, based on 77 interviews, reveal that parents are engaged, involved and concerned about their children’s education success. But they often have to manage the lower expectations of success held by the school and work out how best to prepare their child for a society marked by racism. Parents were particularly concerned about how to ready and protect their children from racist stereotyping – and how and when to talk to them about the dangers of racism.</p>
<h2>The apparent threat of black boys</h2>
<p>While there are areas of overlap, different stereotypes are seen to exist for boys and girls. The parents we interviewed remained alert to societal stereotypes that seek to position black boys as troublesome, a danger or less smart. Richard, a director within the voluntary sector and the father of two primary school aged boys, worried about how to both prepare and protect his sons from racist encounters. Laughing sadly at the absurdity of the situation, he commented: “You can’t go around everywhere they go, when they go for a job interview, you can’t go ‘My son’s coming in, please don’t stereotype him.’” </p>
<p>Racism and racist stereotyping is understood by these parents to be a natural, inevitable part of everyday life – something that has to understood and survived. Even dress and appearance become a source of potential danger for their children. Simone, a senior policy adviser, describes trying to advise her son not to walk around with his hood up because while he sees nothing wrong with it, the “perception of hoodies in the press” is that “people find it intimidating”. </p>
<h2>Sterotypes of black women</h2>
<p>Parents with daughters tended to express concern about stereotypical portrayals of black girls and women in popular culture, where notions of beauty are often based on white female norms. Images of hypersexualised black women, black women with weave and lighter skin are seen to dominate music videos, television programmes and wider media to the detriment of a positive, healthy, black female identity. </p>
<p>Sandrine, a senior local government official with a 13-year-old daughter, argued that “sexiness” as marketised by Beyoncé and Rhianna has become synonymous with success. So much so that complex identities, where black women are educated and ambitious, are downplayed and regarded as less desirable, she argued, even by black girls themselves. </p>
<h2>Banning MTV</h2>
<p>Parents also express concerns about protecting their daughters from versions of beauty that indicate being of mixed heritage or lighter skinned is more desirable. Malorie, an education manager and mother of a 17-year-old daughter, argued: “If you are mixed race in some way you are [seen as] far more attractive than what I call a classic black woman.” </p>
<p>In attempting to police the boundaries of these negative black female stereotypes, Sandrine explained that her sister has responded with her own children by banning MTV – viewed as a major source of such imagery – in her house. Instead, Sandrine attempts to use television as a tool to facilitate debate (although not always welcomed) with her own daughter about individuality, “appropriate” forms of fashion and femininity.</p>
<h2>Battle against subtle racism</h2>
<p>In seeking to raise a black middle-class child who is confident and successful, parents focus not just on navigating the formal education system but also on how to manage and protect their children from racism. This is a precarious issue for parents. There is a tension between not wanting to talk about it – lest it become viewed as an excuse to give up – alongside an imperative to prepare the child for the reality of racism so that it is not internalised or allowed to affect their confidence.</p>
<p>It is important to note that the racism described by parents in the study is not necessarily the crude overt forms associated with far-right groups, it also refers to subtle, everyday acts evident through racist stereotyping and discriminatory actions. </p>
<p>How and when to talk to children about racism is an ongoing worry for black parents, yet remains a central requirement to preparing their child for wider society. The parents we spoke to were educated, qualified professionals with a range of financial and other resources at their disposal. Nonetheless they still experience racism; being middle class does not protect them nor their children from it.</p>
<p>Such insights not only challenge commonly held views that racism is no longer a key concern in British society but also highlight the range of complex responses and strategies required in order to manage and survive racism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/33221/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This project was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council RES 062 23 1880. </span></em></p>One in three people in Britain describe themselves as being very or a little racially prejudiced, according to a recent British Social Attitudes Survey. How are middle-class black families coping with…Nicola Rollock, Deputy Director, Centre for Research in Race & Education , University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/332602014-10-23T05:09:36Z2014-10-23T05:09:36ZParenting is not the key to tackling inequality<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62410/original/zs3cc42g-1413911159.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Happy parenting won't necessarily get you into Oxbridge.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?safesearch=1&search_type=keyword_search&extra_html=1&lang=en&language=en&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&utm_source=sstkimages&utm_medium=onsite&utm_campaign=search&use_local_boost=1&searchterm=parents&show_color_wheel=1&media_type=images&page=1&sort_method=popular&inline=160939241">Parenting via Goodluz/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Britain is quickly turning into a nation characterised by an obscene and unsustainable wealth gap, according to a <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/social-mobility-and-child-poverty-commission">new report on social mobility</a>. Yet behind the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission’s trenchant critique of current party-political strategies for tackling inequality and child poverty there lies a familiar scapegoat – parenting. </p>
<p>The report’s recommendations highlight parenting as the starting point from which to address the disparity between disadvantaged children and their more privileged peers. Its authors argue that politicians should overcome their timidity in calling out bad parenting and establish a national parenting campaign: “to help more parents become excellent parents”.</p>
<h2>Myth of effective parenting</h2>
<p>Beyond the rhetoric of supporting families and improving early years’ services lies a dubious reasoning that the minutiae of everyday interactions between parent and child is deeply significant and capable of overcoming structurally ingrained disadvantages. Effective parenting, the report claims, has a bigger influence on a child’s life than wealth, class or education.</p>
<p>This myth has peppered policy and practice literature for years, but its prevalence conceals a lack of sound evidence to back up such a startling claim. In fact, <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/parenting-family-policy-and-childrens-wellbeing-in-an-unequal-society-dimitra-hartas/?K=9780230354951">analysis of cohort studies</a> demonstrates that family income and maternal education have a greater impact on children’s outcomes such as educational attainment and well-being than any particular parenting styles.</p>
<h2>The schools aren’t ready</h2>
<p>The idea of “school readiness” is central to the Commission’s critique of parenting. It suggests that children from disadvantaged backgrounds are held back by their unpreparedness for education, a problem regarded as symptomatic of ineffective “home learning environments”. This echoes a similar concern <a href="http://www.instituteofhealthequity.org/projects/marmot-indicators-2014">voiced in September</a> by public health expert Michael Marmot asserting that almost half of all five-year-olds are unready for school (two-thirds of whom are from low income households).</p>
<p>The claim attracted much publicity and provoked extensive consternation about the unmet need for parenting support. Few appeared to question why schools were apparently “unready” and unable to educate 50% of their Year 1 intake. </p>
<p>In response to the Marmot report a spokesman for the Department for Education was <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-29317098">quoted</a> as saying: “No child should start school behind their peers”. This revealed just how far understandings of education appear to have moved away from the aim of providing opportunities for all children regardless of their ability or background.</p>
<h2>Heckman equation</h2>
<p>While family has long been targeted as a site for political intervention, the contemporary obsession with parenting policy can be linked to a highly influential economic theory devised by the US Nobel laureate James Heckman. Arguing that human capital is cumulative rather than fixed, Heckman and colleagues proposed a formula summed up in the phrase “<a href="http://www.heckmanequation.org/content/resource/skills-beget-skills">skills beget skills and abilities beget abilities”</a>. </p>
<p>This economic reasoning, known as the “Heckman equation”, asserted that return on human capital was very high in the early years of life and diminished rapidly thereafter. This principle of investing early in a child’s life in order to maximise economic gains was placed at the heart of the New Labour government’s agenda at the end of the last century. Explicitly quoting Heckman’s work, Tony Blair concluded in 2006 that: “<a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20040105034004/http:/number10.gov.uk/page10037">more than anything else, early intervention is crucial if we are to tackle social exclusion</a>”.</p>
<p>The influence of the Heckman equation has been quite remarkable given it remains a purely economic prediction divorced from dialogue with actual research findings. <a href="http://www.bristol.ac.uk/education/people/paul-a-howard-jones/pub/2883579">Attempts to tie the model to empirical evidence</a> have merely highlighted the complexity and unevenness of development from childhood to adulthood. </p>
<p>Yet the desire to ground the equation in facts perhaps partly explains recent <a href="http://www.discoversociety.org/2014/01/06/policy-briefing-the-biologisation-of-poverty-policy-and-practice-in-early-years-intervention/">misappropriations of neuroscience</a> used to justify policies of early years intervention.</p>
<h2>Middle-class advantage</h2>
<p>At a more basic level, the positioning of parenting as a solution to inequality draws on a simple model of investment, with no acknowledgement of the uneven territory and different access to resources that each family has. Middle-class parents can, do – and indeed are now quite explicitly encouraged to – mobilise their considerable resources to ensure their children come out on top. </p>
<p>Money can buy advantages such as extra tuition, educational equipment (ipads, computers, books) and outings, educational assessments and, above all, a house in a <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-third-of-wealthy-parents-have-moved-house-for-a-school-place-21592">good catchment area</a>. Middle-class parents are usually well-educated, academically confident and reasonably familiar with the expectations around which school curriculums are built. This means they are much better able to teach and steer their children towards success. </p>
<p>They also tend to have useful contacts in their social networks (teachers, academics, lawyers), for maximising educational attainment and securing access into important work-experience placements. And, more than ever, in a culture that equates poor parenting with poverty, the more privileged enjoy a level of respect from education professionals <a href="https://www.academia.edu/3549456/From_Baby_Brain_to_Conduct_Disorder_The_New_Determinism_in_the_Classroom">frequently denied to disadvantaged families.</a></p>
<h2>Parental arms race</h2>
<p>The relentless focus on parenting since the millennium can only have made inequality worse. It has precipitated a parental arms race, morally obliging the middle classes to use every advantage to stay ahead and it has legitimated an old-fashioned determinism that ties children’s life chances to their lineage.</p>
<p>If the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission are <a href="https://theconversation.com/act-now-on-social-mobility-or-britain-will-freewheel-into-a-permanently-divided-country-33200">serious about bridging the inequality chasm </a> they will need to address the polarisation of resources, not parenting skills.</p>
<hr>
<p>Next read: <a href="https://theconversation.com/blaming-working-class-parents-for-inequality-lets-our-rampantly-unequal-society-off-the-hook-29674">Blaming working class parents for inequality lets our rampantly unequal society off the hook</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/33260/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Val Gillies receives funding from ESRC. She has also received funding from the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion.</span></em></p>Britain is quickly turning into a nation characterised by an obscene and unsustainable wealth gap, according to a new report on social mobility. Yet behind the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission’s…Val Gillies, (From Dec 2014) Research Professor in Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/296742014-07-25T04:35:19Z2014-07-25T04:35:19ZBlaming working-class parents for inequality lets our rampantly unequal society off the hook<p>For decades, child-care advice claimed that motherhood was a natural quality: the task of the parenting expert, it was claimed, was to help mothers to realise their “natural” mothering potential. In practice, of course, it was never that simple, with some mothers always castigated for apparently lacking that “natural” ability. </p>
<p>There is a long history of attributing failures of all kinds, from school failure to delinquency to mental illness, to “bad” mothering. But in recent years, we have witnessed the rise of the explicit claim that parenthood (because what was called “mothering” has now been extended to include fathers, even if <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2492335/Women-STILL-lions-share-childcare--half-wants-split-chores-equally.html">mothers continue to do most of the childcare</a>) can be taught. </p>
<p>From Channel 4’s <a href="http://www.channel4.com/programmes/supernanny">Supernanny</a> to policy initiatives like the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/helping-troubled-families-turn-their-lives-around">Troubled Families programme</a>, teaching parents how to parent is one of the hot topics of our time.</p>
<p>Bringing up children is incredibly complex, but for the purpose of political soundbites it’s spoken of in very simplistic terms. Despite there being <a href="http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/aspirations-attitudes-educational-attainment-roundup">scant evidence</a> of a direct causal relationship between parenting behaviour and child outcomes, the idea is extremely seductive; it promises change to the social fabric without drawing attention to the deeper social inequalities that actually underlie it. </p>
<h2>Make them better</h2>
<p>In one glaring example, the think tank Demos’s 2009 report <a href="http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/parenting">Building Character</a> hinged on the idea that parenting held the key to social mobility: “parents are the architects of a fairer society”, it proclaimed. </p>
<p>Parents are now tasked not just with loving their children, providing care and stability and the rest, but with improving the landscape of our whole society. This logic has underpinned various policies and government-sponsored initiatives to “improve” working-class parents, including the current Troubled Families programme spearheaded by <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/people/louise-casey">Louise Casey</a>. </p>
<p>Leaving aside the obvious methodological problems with the claims made about the extent and character of (and solutions to) whatever “trouble” means in this context, the Troubled Families initiative rests on the assumption that the problem lies in a lack of skills, rather than a lack of money, time and resources – and that it is the craft of parenting, rather than social inequality, that really matters. </p>
<p>The recent policy fad for neurobiology has only entrenched these assumptions, even as its claims are based on <a href="https://www.academia.edu/3549456/From_Baby_Brain_to_Conduct">spurious evidence and highly contentious “findings”</a>. The success of the idea that children are neurologically shaped primarily by their parents is based less on an understanding of the (very new and unclear) neuroscience itself, and more on a fit with a popular and commonplace narrative.</p>
<p>In this narrative, a child’s “outcomes” – her character, her success or failure, her adult life – are all within the gift of the parents. The assumption is that parents can shape and control the lives of their children and thus bring forth responsible citizens. But more than that, it rests on the reverse logic of examining successful adult lives and extrapolating from them. </p>
<p>In effect, the logic is that since middle-class people are successful, they must have benefited from better parenting. The privileges that make up middle-classness, on the other hand, are kept firmly hidden. </p>
<h2>Guaranteeing happiness</h2>
<p>There is little room here for a deep discussion of our <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/5479729/Working-class-children-let-down-by-education-system.html">deeply classed education system</a>, or of unequal access to economic, cultural and social capital. A wealth of educational research has shown that social class <a href="http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/6639/1/DCSF-RW004.pdf">plays a crucial role in educational achievement</a>. </p>
<p>Working-class parents are just as likely as middle-class parents to care about their children’s education, but they are less likely to be able to trade up to the “best” catchment areas, to insist the school treats their child as unique, or to buy education in the form of private school or additional privately-bought tuition. </p>
<p>Seeing the process of social change as involving little more than a change in “parenting culture” reduces social inequality to an output of individual psychology and performance, rather than in the social world’s structured inequalities.</p>
<p>This is not to suggest that middle-class women are immune from the pressure to raise their children in particular ways; what sociologists have termed “<a href="http://healthland.time.com/2012/08/07/mother-is-best-why-intensive-parenting-makes-moms-more-depressed/">intensive parenting</a>” and “<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/02/explaining-annette-lareau-or-why-parenting-style-ensures-inequality/253156/">concerted cultivation</a>”. </p>
<p>These terms describe the financially, emotionally and time-consuming practices of <a href="http://eprints.ioe.ac.uk/2320/">making sure children’s future happiness and success is “guaranteed”</a>. Importantly, the right (high) input of high-quality parenting is not only supposedly crucial to children’s outcomes; it also determines how we perceive their parents, and especially mothers, whose social standing is contingent on their child-rearing accomplishments.</p>
<h2>Speak no evil</h2>
<p>Of course, nobody is suggesting that parents ought to be able to treat their children badly; parenting undeniably carries a moral, emotional and political responsibility. But recent initiatives such as the Troubled Families programme have heaped new kinds of responsibility on working-class parents in particular and only continue to present the inequalities they are forced to negotiate as their own fault. </p>
<p>Any explicit reference to the structural inequalities of class – as opposed to the supposed deficits and failings of those lower down the scale – is notable by its absence from the official debates.</p>
<p>When people are encouraged to think and speak about themselves solely as individual, self-regulating, entrepreneurial beings, the class system disappears from the picture. To acknowledge it would mean acknowledging social and economic privilege – and in turn exposing the lack of moral justification for that privilege. </p>
<p>Not only that: when we more closely examine the skills and attributes deemed necessary to succeed in our supposed meritocracy, we find that we all remain hostage to the largely unfounded claims of middle-class judges – whose self-proclaimed “merits” are treated as if they were universally and naturally valid.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/29674/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jacqueline Close receives funding from the ESRC.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephanie Lawler does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For decades, child-care advice claimed that motherhood was a natural quality: the task of the parenting expert, it was claimed, was to help mothers to realise their “natural” mothering potential. In practice…Stephanie Lawler, Reader in Sociology, Newcastle UniversityJacqueline Close, PhD Candidate in Sociology, Newcastle UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/238062014-03-05T13:08:38Z2014-03-05T13:08:38ZEnglish grammar schools try to shake off middle class bias<p>England’s 164 state grammar schools form a distinctive but controversial part of the nation’s education system. These schools are distinctive in terms of their high levels of performance – one consequence of them being the only state schools allowed to choose the pupils they educate by testing applicants’ ability. They are controversial because of their perceived negative impact on social mobility. </p>
<p>While grammar school advocates claim that they provide a “ladder of opportunity” for “disadvantaged” pupils, recent evidence challenges this assertion. For example, a <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/our-work/research/item/poor-grammar-entry-into-grammar-schools-disadvantaged-pupils-in/">recent Sutton Trust Report</a> has shown that disadvantaged pupils form a very small minority of entrants to grammar schools, and more than five times their number come from relatively privileged backgrounds. </p>
<p>This challenge was articulated by the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/dec/14/ofsted-chief-war-grammar-schools">robust assertion of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Schools, Michael Wilshaw</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Grammar schools are stuffed full of middle-class kids. A tiny percentage are on free school meals: 3%. That is a nonsense. Anyone who thinks grammar schools are going to increase social mobility needs to look at those figures. I don’t think they work. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Admission to grammar school is normally decided by competitive selection tests. Applicants’ scores are ranked, with those achieving the highest marks selected for entry. The tests are administered by an admissions authority – traditionally the school’s local authority. But as the school system has changed, foundation, voluntary aided, trust schools and converter academies are now responsible for their own admissions, subject to department of education’s <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/275598/school_admissions_code_1_february_2012.pdf">School Admissions Code</a>. </p>
<p>There is no single national selection test for grammar schools. Different agencies provide tests which have for many years followed a similar pattern using verbal, non-verbal, maths and English components. These commercially created tests allow previous years’ examples to be purchased and so become available for tutoring and practice. </p>
<p>The chart below shows a summary of admissions to grammar schools over the recent five year period. For each grammar school, this shows two factors for each school: the percentage of pupils admitted who were educated outside of state primary schools (the blue line), and the percentage admitted who were economically disadvantaged, measured by their eligibility for free school meals. England’s 164 grammar schools are placed here in order along the x axis, ranked by the size of their non-state school admission percentage. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43098/original/s3vmcbn2-1393950037.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43098/original/s3vmcbn2-1393950037.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43098/original/s3vmcbn2-1393950037.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43098/original/s3vmcbn2-1393950037.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43098/original/s3vmcbn2-1393950037.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43098/original/s3vmcbn2-1393950037.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43098/original/s3vmcbn2-1393950037.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43098/original/s3vmcbn2-1393950037.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Grammar school admissions over last five years.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This shows clearly that for most grammar schools, many more pupils were admitted from relatively advantaged backgrounds compared with those children officially designated as disadvantaged. Some exceptions are shown on the right of the graph, where a small number of schools admit similar proportions of pupils from these contrasting backgrounds. They are, however, a minority.</p>
<h2>Tutoring for the test</h2>
<p>Evidence is now accumulating about how bias towards the admission of pupils from more advantaged backgrounds may arise. There are at least two factors at work here relating to the use of conventional forms of selection test. These allow families with the financial resources to assign tutors to help their pupils work through past test papers with intense practice. Tutors also increase familiarity with the subject matter, and so enhance children’s chances of passing the local selection tests. </p>
<p>Another factor is parents who enrol their pupils in non-state prep schools. Because these schools do not have to follow the national curriculum, they are much freer than state-maintained schools to devote substantial time to preparing their pupils for selection tests.</p>
<p>The research carried out for the Sutton Trust suggests that many grammar schools are unhappy with their current selection procedures and are looking for ways to widen access for bright but disadvantaged pupils within their communities.</p>
<h2>Pupil premium as an incentive</h2>
<p>One important government initiative to address some of the educational consequences of disadvantage has provided additional funding for schools in the form of the <a href="http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/pupilsupport/premium">pupil premium</a>. This is intended to enhance performance for pupils who have been in receipt of free school meals at any time over the previous six years. </p>
<p>Some grammar schools which are in control of their own admissions have either already amended or are seeking to amend their “over-subscription” criteria to prioritise the admission of pupils in receipt of the pupil premium over those without – even if the children achieved an identical score on the selection test. At least one grammar school in Warwickshire has adopted this approach.</p>
<p>Other schools applied through the department of education’s Power to Innovate initiative to go one step further, by setting a lower target score for admission for pupils in receipt of the pupil premium. These attempts are now being evaluated. </p>
<p>Some grammar schools, for example those in Buckinghamshire and Redbridge, have attempted to remove the advantage gained by pupils being tutored using past test papers for intensive practice. They have commissioned new tests from agencies that are secure from unauthorised access and not publicly available. These tests comprise substantial sections aligned with the national curriculum in English and maths, which make them more accessible to pupils in state-maintained primary schools. In Buckinghamshire, this method was introduced in 2013, while in Redbridge it has been in use for five years.</p>
<p>A future where grammar schools play their full part in helping bright pupils from all backgrounds achieve has long been a goal of education reform. These initiatives could go some way to making this happen. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/23806/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Jesson has received funding from The Specialist Schools & Academies Trust; Audit Commision, The Educational Endowment Foundation and also from various charitable organisations such as The Church of England and the Catholic Church in England.</span></em></p>England’s 164 state grammar schools form a distinctive but controversial part of the nation’s education system. These schools are distinctive in terms of their high levels of performance – one consequence…David Jesson, Associate Director of the Centre for Performance Evaluation and Resource Management and Honorary Visiting Professor, University of YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/20032011-07-11T00:08:17Z2011-07-11T00:08:17ZMiddle classes and the Party: changing faces of power in China<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/1876/original/Gucci_tank_flickr_gadget_dan.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=111%2C130%2C865%2C551&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Designer shopping in China can lead to an experience like no other.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/Gadgetdan</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>China’s phenomenal economic growth during the last three decades has significantly altered its pattern of social stratification. One of the most equal countries in the world has become one of the most unequal. </p>
<p>It is calculated that the <a href="http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTPOVERTY/EXTPA/0,,contentMDK:20238991%7EmenuPK:492138%7EpagePK:148956%7EpiPK:216618%7EtheSitePK:430367,00.html">Gini coefficient</a>, which measures income inequality (0 is low,1 is high) has gone from 0.22 in 1978 to 0.49 in 2011. </p>
<p>It is also calculated that at any one time there are as many as 100 million rural migrant workers looking for work in urban areas, while at the same time deprived of local civil rights and access to services. </p>
<p>At the other end of the social scale, China’s media are full of stories about the lifestyles of the rich and the famous. A society of equal poverty has become one often characterised by excess.</p>
<h2>The middle classes</h2>
<p>Both inside and outside the People’s Republic the changes of the last thirty years are most usually described in terms of the rise of the Chinese middle class or middle classes. </p>
<p>The middle class is not a <a href="http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/c/l.htm">Marxist category</a> though the Chinese Communist Party and theorists in China often use it as though it were. </p>
<p>The middle class is also not a precise term. Historically it has covered everything from the bourgeoisie of the industrial revolution (the middle in-between the court and the townspeople); to the professional and managerial middle classes that emerged in the early twentieth century to people the development of modern states and economic enterprises. </p>
<p>It is though a popular term, promising attractive markets (especially to those outside China) and greater equality as well as growth (to those within the People’s Republic.)</p>
<p>The middle classes in China are certainly growing in numbers. Many more people have access to more real disposable income than ever before. </p>
<h2>The trappings of the middle classes</h2>
<p>There are new generations of private house owners; consumption patterns that resonate closely with middle class behaviour elsewhere in the world; and the emergence of post-capitalist value sets, even though much of China remains at a fairly early stage of capitalist development. </p>
<p>There has also been a dramatic growth in the proportion of the workforce employed in professional and managerial roles to support economic activities and enterprises. </p>
<p>At the same time, the middle class aspects of China’s development and stratification need to be kept in perspective.</p>
<h2>Where’s the money?</h2>
<p>China has had three decades of growth but it is still not a rich economy, though it is a large country. </p>
<p>The average annual urban income in 2009 was 18,858 Chinese dollars (<a href="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2006-09/29/content_699307.htm">Renminbi</a>) per capita; the average annual rural income 6,270 Chinese dollars. </p>
<p>Scale means that a small rise in income per capita in China can have serious ramifications for the rest of the world. But it has 1300 million people and gross national income per capita is only about US$6,890, based on <a href="http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GNP.PCAP.PP.CD">Purchasing Power Parity</a>.</p>
<p>Only about 11 per cent of the population has an annual income of 60,000 Chinese dollars or more. In purchasing terms those 60,000 Chinese dollars are approximately equivalent to an annual Australian income of AUD$60,000. </p>
<p>The goal for the regime is to grow this proportion so that 20 per cent of the population are in this category by 2020. And the ultimate objective is to achieve an “<a href="http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2010/09/a-glimpse-of-chinas-middle-class/">olive shaped distribution configuration … in which middle income workers are the majority.</a>”</p>
<h2>Wealth creation, Communist style</h2>
<p>While some occupations and activities that have developed during the last thirty years are new and did not really exist in the People’s Republic before the 1980s – notably entrepreneurs and lawyers – the earlier years had already seen the emergence of the professional and managerial middle classes. </p>
<p>Particularly during the 1950s a prime goal for the Chinese Communist Party was the creation of a modern nation state, and that entailed education, health, transport, finance, and security, all of which required managers and professionals. </p>
<p>The operation of state socialism also entailed managers and professionals to staff the state’s economic activities.</p>
<p>There was, in short, a substantial middle class even before 1978. </p>
<h2>Social tensions</h2>
<p>At times during the last thirty years there has been a tension between the interests and values of the new enterprise-oriented middle classes, and those whose occupations and maybe their own employment were more longer-term established and state-focussed. </p>
<p>This observation about differences amongst China’s middle classes leads inevitably to consideration of wealth and of the relationships between wealth and class, and wealth and power. </p>
<p>The entrepreneurial class that has emerged since 1978 has clearly driven wealth creation in the People’s Republic, but not every entrepreneur has been wildly successful. </p>
<p>In addition to the nationally famous and successful there are also not-so-fabulously wealthy and even poor entrepreneurs. </p>
<p>It may be politically desirable to describe entrepreneurs as middle class, but the description is unconvincing especially where the very wealthy are concerned: the latter in particular are increasingly part of the elite. </p>
<h2>The super-rich</h2>
<p>China’s captains of industry have lifestyles and opportunities that the middle classes may aspire to but certainly do not share. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.hurun.net/hurun//indexen.aspx">Hurun</a>, the Chinese research company that tracks the country’s rich and famous calculates that there are 825,000 people worth individually more than 10 million Chinese dollars each; and 51,000 with more than 100 million Chinese dollars (just over AUD$62million at today’s exchange rate.) </p>
<p>According to Hurun two-thirds of these super-rich spend 1 to 3 million a year, mainly in luxury goods, and a further one-fifth spend more than 3 million Chinese dollars a year the same way. </p>
<h2>Politics and money </h2>
<p>Though outside China the notion of wealth and entrepreneurship may be associated with independence from the political process, in the People’s Republic the relationship is close. </p>
<p>Successful entrepreneurs have either grown out of the Party-state or been accommodated into it in different roles. </p>
<p>The restructuring of state socialism meant that many state sector economic managements became, and were officially encouraged to become, entrepreneurs. </p>
<p>Necessarily they maintained their links with the Party-state both when they led state economic interests that were being commercialized and made to operate in the market, and when they and their economic activities were allowed to operate even more independently of the state sector. </p>
<p>Private entrepreneurs starting businesses have long found that continued growth requires a close relationship to the Party-state, maybe even involving shared equity with government, especially at the local level. </p>
<p>Even where that does not occur entrepreneurs are co-opted into public and political life in many ways, through being deputies to People’s Congresses, serving as local notables on various committees, and even being encouraged to join the Chinese Communist Party and sometimes assume local-level leadership roles. </p>
<p>Times have changed. It is now no surprise that the country’s leading entrepreneurs are to be seen increasingly in positions of power and influence nationally as well as locally.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/2003/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David S G Goodman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>China’s phenomenal economic growth during the last three decades has significantly altered its pattern of social stratification. One of the most equal countries in the world has become one of the most…David S G Goodman, Professor of Chinese Politics, Acting Director of China Studies Centre, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.