The past two decades have witnessed a significant rise in interest in the middle classes in comparative contexts. While public and mainstream policy debates have often tended to present the middle classes as idealized embodiments of economic progress through images of consumption, scholarly work has sought to grapple with the complexities and contradictions that characterize this social group. Jason Sumich's The Middle Class in Mozambique is a welcome addition to this literature. The book presents an in-depth analysis of the ways in which the middle class in Mozambique has been ‘intertwined with previous projects of transformation’ (p. 155) that span from the colonial period to the present era of economic reform. This approach allows the book to provide a rich analysis of the ways in which the middle class is a category that is produced by political projects of transformation and change rather than a self-evident economistic category. This theoretical approach provides a number of points of comparison and contrast to comparative work on the middle classes.
One of the major strengths of Sumich's work is his analysis of the relationship between the state and middle-class formation and politics in Mozambique. The creation of the middle class by the state (p. 15) and the continued significance of the party state in providing segments of the middle class with privilege echo parallel processes in other state socialist environments. In the Indian context, for instance, while contemporary discourses associated with the middle classes focus on post-reform consumption, historically specific policies of both the colonial state and the planned twentieth-century developmental state were crucial processes in the making of the modern middle class.
In this context of state formation, Sumich's discussion of the Mozambique state provides a rich and generative basis for further discussion on the nature of the state–middle-class relationship. For instance, the book illustrates that, while the state–middle-class relationship remains an underlying foundation through various historical periods, this relationship also shifts. The shift from a state socialist project to a reform-oriented state is a particularly significant change that echoes trends in comparative contexts (ranging from Eastern Europe to Asia). The closure of industries and the freezing of salaries in the state bureaucracy (p. 106), as the book shows, foreground the precarity of middle-class privilege in the context of broader economic and political transformations. One issue that this raises is how we think about differences within the middle classes. For example, the book seems to focus primarily on more privileged middle-class members and those who have the support of party linkages. How did internal processes of differentiation shape the middle classes? The book has some interesting discussion of the gendered dimensions of the symbolic representation of the middle classes. How is this further complicated by differences between the lower and upper middle classes and are there symbolic differences that are shaped by such socio-economic stratification? Do rural–urban differences play out in this stratification?
Such questions about the interplay between middle-class stratification and the question of symbolic representation raise a broader question about the changing nature of the state–middle-class relationship. The book shows that economic reforms produced both changes (with a familiar turn to an emphasis on consumption) and historical continuities (for example, relationships with the state still shape access to the privileges of new property markets).
The question that remains is one that addresses the nature of state power and how it changes in the context of post-reform policies in Mozambique. For instance, does the hegemonic representation of the middle classes (which the book grapples with) change? From a comparative perspective, the middle classes in India have continued their relationship with the state in the post-reform period. However, the nature of the hegemonic incorporation of the middle classes has changed (even as the middle-class–state relationship remains central). In post-reform India, the upper tiers of the middle classes have served as a hegemonic representational source of support for state policies of reform even as, in practice, large segments of the middle classes remain in a precarious economic position. On the one hand, idealized images of middle-class consumption serve as the symbolic terrain of the success of reforms in ways that shape middle-class identity and practices, as individuals aspire to the benefits of reform. On the other hand, this idealized image rests in uneasy tension with many segments of the middle classes (from subaltern castes, religious minorities and less privileged socio-economic backgrounds) who struggle with processes of exclusion and sustained inequality, as I discuss in ‘India's middle classes in contemporary India’ (in Routledge Handbook of Contemporary India, 2015) and India's New Middle Class: democratic politics in an era of economic reform (University of Minnesota Press, 2006). Does the state–middle-class relationship in Mozambique change in similar ways in the context of the recent economic transitions? Or do the legacies of the state–middle-class relationship (and the nature and dynamics of state power) in Mozambique continue because of the specific nature of the party state?
Such questions point both to the complexities of and the need for the sustained study of the middle classes in comparative contexts. Jason Sumich's book provides a valuable addition to this agenda and a refreshing break from simplified consumption-focused studies that too often conflate the identity of the middle classes with consumer behaviour.
