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Middle Class: An Intellectual History through Social Sciences
An American Fetish from its Origins to Globalization
Series: - Studies in Critical Social Sciences, Volume: 220
Author:
Matteo Battistini offers a critical deconstruction of the fetish that social sciences have forged for legitimising American capitalism. The intellectual history of the middle class provides the social history of a political concept that assumes a specific scientific content acquiring an ideological centrality that has no equal in European history. The social sciences have freed the middle class from its historical relationship with work in an attempt to emancipate it from the tension into which it was continually dragged by class conflict. In this way, the social sciences overturn the image of opposing forces of labour and capital into a consensual order whereby capitalism and democracy would coexist without tension.
This book was originally published as Storia di un feticcio. La classe media americana dalle origini alla globalizzazione, by Mimesis, Milan, Italy, 2020.
This book was originally published as Storia di un feticcio. La classe media americana dalle origini alla globalizzazione, by Mimesis, Milan, Italy, 2020.
Matteo Battistini, Ph.D. (2008), Alma Mater Studiorum â University of Bologna, is Professor of U.S. History at that university. He has published monographs and articles on American political and intellectual history, including Karl Marx and the Global History of the American Civil War (ILWCH, Fall 2021)
"Battistini's book has the merit of showing the historical and political meanings that the concept [of the middle class] has taken on in the passage across the Atlantic and in the circulation among different academic disciplines, because it is in the United States that the reference to the middle class takes on its most historically and politically relevant meaning."
- Maurizio Ricciardi, International Review of Social History (2024), pp. 1-3.
- Maurizio Ricciardi, International Review of Social History (2024), pp. 1-3.
Preface
Acknowledgments
1âThe Middle Class between History and Social Sciences
â1âThe (Lower) English Middle Class
â2âBourgeoise and Classe Moyenne
â3âMittelstand and Neuer Mittelstand
â4âCrossing the Atlantic
2âThe American Middle Class A Taken-for-Granted History?
â1âThe Middle Class as a Historiographic Category
â2âThe Middle Class as a Sociological Problem
â3âThe Middle Class of Progressivism
â4âBrain Workers of the World, Unite!
3âThe Middle Class as Historical Project
â1âThe Demiurge of the Middle Class
â2âThe New Deal for the Middle Class
â3âThe Crisis of the Middle Class
â4âThe Ideological Battle for the Middle Class
â5âThe Middle Class as Political Concept
4âThe Rise and Fall of a Fetish
â1âThe Middle Class of Liberalism
â2âThe Movement against the Middle Class
â3âThe New Class of Neoconservatism (and Neoliberalism)
â4âThe Middle Class as a Figure of the Crisis (in Globalisation)
References
Index
Acknowledgments
1âThe Middle Class between History and Social Sciences
â1âThe (Lower) English Middle Class
â2âBourgeoise and Classe Moyenne
â3âMittelstand and Neuer Mittelstand
â4âCrossing the Atlantic
2âThe American Middle Class A Taken-for-Granted History?
â1âThe Middle Class as a Historiographic Category
â2âThe Middle Class as a Sociological Problem
â3âThe Middle Class of Progressivism
â4âBrain Workers of the World, Unite!
3âThe Middle Class as Historical Project
â1âThe Demiurge of the Middle Class
â2âThe New Deal for the Middle Class
â3âThe Crisis of the Middle Class
â4âThe Ideological Battle for the Middle Class
â5âThe Middle Class as Political Concept
4âThe Rise and Fall of a Fetish
â1âThe Middle Class of Liberalism
â2âThe Movement against the Middle Class
â3âThe New Class of Neoconservatism (and Neoliberalism)
â4âThe Middle Class as a Figure of the Crisis (in Globalisation)
References
Index
All interested in the history of the middle classes and of US social sciences, and anyone concerned with intellectual and political history of the United States.