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This volume challenges the concept of the ´new African middle class´ with new theoretical and empirical insights into the changing lives in Sub-Saharan Africa. Diverse middle classes are on the rise, but models of class based on experiences from other regions of the world cannot be easily transferred to the African continent. Empirical contributions, drawn from a diverse range of contexts, address both African histories of class formation and the political roles of the continent´s middle classes, and also examine the important interdependencies that cut across inter-generational, urban-rural and class divides. This thought-provoking book argues emphatically for a revision of common notions of the ´middle class´, and for the inclusion of insights ´from the South´ into the global debate on class.

Middle Classes in Africa will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, as well as NGOs and policy makers with an interest in African societies.

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1. Introduction: Africa´s Middle Classes in Critical Perspective; Tabea Scharrer, David O´Kane and Lena Kroeker Section 1: Rethinking Concepts of Middle Classes in Africa 2. Turning the Poor into Something More Inspiring: The Creation of the African Middle Class Controversy; Dominique Darbon 3. The Narrative of ´the African Middle Class´ and its Conceptual Limitations; Dieter Neubert and Florian Stoll 4. Anthropology and Class in Africa: Challenges of the Past and Present Section 2: The Recurring Rise and Return of Middle Classes in Africa; David O´Kane and Tabea Scharrer 5. The Ghanaian Middle Class, Social Stratification, and Long-Term Dynamics of Upward and Downward Mobility of Lawyers and Teachers; Jan Budniok and Andrea Noll 6. The Nubians of Kibera ´Revisited´: Detribalized Natives, Slum Dwellers, Middle class?; Johanna Sarre 7. Saving and Serving the Nation: HIV Politics and the Emergence of New Professional Classes in Botswana; Astrid Bochow Section 3: The Political Consequences of the Middle Classes 8. Propertied Citizenship in a Township and Suburb in Johannesburg; Barbara Heer 9. Thinking Sierra Leone and Building a New Middle Class: Political Expression and Political Values at the University of Makeni; David O´Kane 10. African Middle Classes: Formation and Destabilizing Effects Section 4: Formation of Social Interconnections and Interdependencies; Jason Musyoka 11. Pathways into the Middle: Rites of Passage and Emerging Middle Classes in Namibia; Julia Pauli 12. Middle Class Approaches to Social Security in Kenya; Lena Kroeker 13. Middle Classes and ´Moderate Prosperity´ in Rural Madagascar; Tsiry Andrianampiarivo 14. Afterword. The (Idea of) African Middle Classes: Theorizing from Africa; Rachel Spronk.

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"The volume is well structured, offers nuanced questions, and engages with relevant challenges relating to current trends in social formations of African societies." (Henning Melber, Africa Spectrum, Vol. 53 (1), 2018)

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Lena Kroeker is Research Fellow at the Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies, University of Bayreuth, Germany

David O´Kane is an Associate of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale, Germany

Tabea Scharrer is Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale, Germany

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