INDIA’S MIDDLE CLASS: NEW FORMS OF URBAN LEISURE, CONSUMPTION AND

PROPERITY BY CHRISTIANE BROSIUS- A BOOK REVIEW

India’s Middle Class: New Forms of Urban Leisure, Consumption and Prosperity

By Christiane Brosius- A Book Review

By Garima Mukherjee

Centre of Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University

 ABSTRACT

Post-liberalisation period in India was marked with dramatic changes in patterns of

consumption most notably visible in the middle classes. Christiane Brosius in her

ethnographic account of the urban middle class of India in her book India’s Middle Class:

New Forms of Urban Leisure, Consumption and Prosperity (Brosius, 2010) addresses various

aspects of the urban middle class experience in India and what it means to be a part of this

affluent class given the political background in India post 1980s.

Keywords: patterns of consumption, urban middle class experience, post-liberalisation

INDIA’S MIDDLE CLASS: NEW FORMS OF URBAN LEISURE, CONSUMPTION AND

PROSPERITY

Brosius, C. (2010). India's Middle Class. London: Routledge India.

Christiane Brosius in India’s Middle Class: New Forms of Urban Leisure, Consumption and

Prosperity (Brosius, 2010) attempts to understand the new cosmopolitan and transnational

middle class that has emerged in the post-liberalisation period in India. The book contributes

to our understanding of how a new kind of middle class is coming on the scene and setting

itself apart from the existing middle class and one sees that differences between the two kinds

essentially are demonstrated by what and how the new class consumes. Her ethnographic

work covers the urban middle class of Delhi-NCR and includes interviews with various

architects, real estate developers, volunteers at ACC, beauticians, wedding planners etc. The

setting of this book is the aftermath of the Bharatiya Janta Party campaign that strived to

globalise and modernize the country by targeting the upper middle class, exporting ancient

Indian cultural traditions (Hindu more precisely as one will see later in the text) which led to

the emergence of a new kind of class consciousness among the urban middle class.

The book is divided into three parts, the first part titled Belonging to the World Class City is

an account of how social control is practiced through urban planning. According to Brosius

real estate developers become the conveyors of new opinions regarding a certain type of

lifestyle that advocates seclusion from the ‘outside’ world by inhabiting as ‘citizens’ would,

in a gated community comparing such communities to the palaces of ‘Maharajas’, the new

middle class then aspires for the life ‘inside’ the gated community which is safe and protected

against the threat of disorder one sees in the ‘outside’ world (Brosius, 2010, p72). This way
of looking at the world and at oneself, Brosius calls “the enclave gaze” (Brosius, 2010, p.42).

This kind of spatial segregation leads to a sort of distinction among the people of the city

which is hierarchical, implying that those living inside a gated community are in some way

superior, more civilised and moral than those living outside and this perspective is advertised

throughout the city in forms of attractive visuals and appealing texts that promise those who

aspire to belong in this emerging transnational class, “a packaged and gated Eden” (Brosius,

2010). Brosius also discusses about the growing obsession with shopping in malls and

shopping as “pleasure and leisure activity” (Brosius, 2010, p.51) in general that requires more

and more sites that provide such experience for example not only malls but theme based

parks and religious- spiritual buildings that promote the idea of erlebnis or experience but

more accurately meaning getting the most out of every moment. Brosius also draws a contrast

between British town planning in colonial India and how the elites of today have similarly

succeeded in creating a ‘public space’ for themselves. The second part of the book A Spiritual

Mega Experience: The Akshardham Cultural Complex is a case study of a religious-spiritual

monument and various social elements that function within the organisation that runs the

complex. This section of the book points towards the “rooted cosmopolitanism”

(Brosius,2010) that can be seen in the rising transnational elites, the idea that one needs to

have knowledge about one’s one culture and religion in order to be modern is popular among

this class group. The marginal religious group BAPS and the ideology of Swaminarayan

promotes a new kind of nationalist and patriotic sentiments among this class members who

even though may have not been born and brought up in India, see themselves as the class

comparatively more ‘Indian’ and ‘modern’ due to their religiosity than those who are not

religious. Part 3 of the book titled Masti! Masti! Managing love, romance and beauty

discusses how the new middle class manages and maintains the Self. The beauty and wellness

industry not only acts as a “machinery of self-surveillance and self-control” (Brosius, 2010,
p.323) but also almost makes one believe that wellness is one’s moral duty. There is thus a

constant pressure on the aspiring class to have a “beautiful mind, body and life” (Brosius,

2010, p.323).

Brosius has linked the consumption pattern of this new class to the logic of late capitalism.

In the period of late capitalism there is “production of celebration and consumption”

(Brosius, 2010, p.142) which is clearly visible in the kind of lifestyle the new transnational

middle class of India follows, anxieties of this class is also discussed by Brosius, fear of

losing one’s position or not being able to keep up with the pace dictates their activities, likes

and dislikes. Sara Dickey has done similar work on the urban middle class in Madurai and

argues that, “the negative sides (of being in the middle) include the intense scrutiny of

behaviour by social onlookers; the need to perform a consumerist class identity with limited

financial means; the excessive pressure to work and earn sufficiently to finance this

consumption; the consequences of performing inadequately and the fear of downward class

mobility…” (Dickey, 2012, p.578), we can thus see a similarity between the arguments made

by Brosius and Dickey, Brosius too records narratives of the members of the urban middle

class toil to sustain their position in times of financial difficulties. Dickey in her account of

the emerging middle class in Madurai notes that liberalization process post 1980s affected

consumption patterns and even employment of the middle class. Due to an increase in import

of foreign goods and loans being easily available, consuming not only became relatively

cheaper than before but because of the wide range of options now available, consuming

became a form of art, one that needed to be mastered to make it to the affluent class. Along

the same lines, Brosius’s text identifies ‘taste’ as being critical when class position and to

perform one’s class comes into question, according to Bourdieu “taste is a strategy of

legitimising a particular practise as superior to others, by creating dichotomies of….

‘cultivated’ and ‘vulgar’ ” (Bourdieu, 1993), one can see how carefully the new middle class

treads on the path of aspiring to become and maintain an affluent lifestyle and most

importantly how it learns to do so. A clear distinction between old and new middle class is

also made by those who belong to the ‘old’ middle class, they claim that the new middle class

despite of being wealthy lack ‘taste’ and one’s class position is determined by not ‘what’ one

consumes but by knowing ‘how much’ to consume. Brosius’s demonstration of how ‘middle

classness’ is performed by the urban middle class in India is true to how Weber sees class,

class for him is a “function of person or group’s position in the capitalist market” (Liechty,

2003) and the new ‘rooted’ cosmopolitan middle class in India can be seen in this light

functioning in a certain way and performing to maintain their class position, there is pressure

to always maintain a consumerist identity regardless of one’s financial situation. By

inhabiting in gated communities this class not only strives to exclude itself from the rest of

the society but also intends to confine itself to its own class in order to keep learning and

practising its ‘middle classness’. Real estate developers and architects along with the

advertising industry become the conveyors of opinions about how and what one should aspire

for if one is looking to become a part of this affluent class. The account on ACC is an

ethnographic example that offers the reader insight into the cosmopolitan life that requires

one to have deep knowledge of one’s own culture and history and also how such knowledge

is used to exercise social control. Along with residing in a gated community and being

spiritual, this class also feels the pressure to always look elite, they act as representors of their

class and thus must always look beautiful and display a life of good health and well-being.

Brosius brings to the table a fresh perspective on the rising ‘new’ middle class and what it

means to be a part of this class, what is interesting is that ‘middle class’ as opposed to be seen

as being defined in simple terms, is actually a very complex concept because the experience

is often even more difficult to make sense of as compared to the experiences of the classes
which are diametrically opposed. Use of pictures that portray the growing focus on ‘living the

good life’ also indicate how powerful media is in shaping mind-sets and aspirations, the

cover of the book is one such example where one can see an inviting advertisement that is a

blend of ‘Western-ness’ and ‘Indian-ness’. What the text however misses out on is to analyse

how the experiences of other classes facilitate in the formulation of the middle class

experience discussed in the book. For a class to maintain its own position it must not only

succeed in keeping out other classes from entering their domain which a reader does see in

the ways a cosmopolitan middle class individual maintains and increases competition, but

other classes too must perform ‘classness’ of their own class, and how their performance adds

to the experience of the emerging middle class is something Brosius’s text does not focus on.

Nevertheless, the book is an exemplary account of the rising transnational middle class

supplemented with appealing and indicative visuals and engaging narratives.

References

Brosius, C. (2010). India's Middle Class. London: Routledge India.

Bourdieu, Pierre. & Johnson, Randal. (1993).The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art

and Literature. Cambridge, England: Polity Press

Dickey, S. (2012). The Pleasures and Anxieties of Being in the Middle: Emerging Middle-

Class Identities in Urban South India. Modern Asian Studies, 46(3), 559-599.

Liechty, Mark. (2003). Suitably Modern: Making Middle-Class Culture in a New Consumer

Society. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.