We Have Never Been Middle Class

Taking apart the ideology of the "middle class"

This is a subtle contribution to the emerging anthropology of social class. In a wide-ranging and thoughtful contribution, Hadas Weiss shows how notions of investment, accumulation and property undergird the appeal of middle class ideology across the globe.

With a wink to Postone, Lukacs and the classical Frankfurt School, anthropologist Hadas Weiss tells us that our embrace of the middle class bespeaks our collective powerlessness in the face of financialized capital. Reflecting on her own ethnographic research in Germany and Israel, as well as on the current literature, she has lots of understanding but little patience for the myths we have come to live by.

Maybe we already knew the middle class to be a myth, just as a child may have an inkling that Santa Claus isn't real. But when the adults in the room keep telling you that good boys and girls will keep getting presents, it can be hard to give up the faith. We Have Never Been Middle Classputs the matter to rest. In this extraordinary book, as relentlessly smart as it is astonishingly moving, Hadas Weiss tells us not only who put the presents under the tree but why. With remarkable grace and acuity, she is able to simultaneously conjure up and deconstruct the ideology of today's financialised capitalism. The lessons are unnerving, but they are neither melancholy nor nostalgic. Just because things are worse now doesn't mean they were better then.

Hadas Weiss is an anthropologist based at the Madrid Institute for Advanced Study