The Middle Class In Southeast Asia: Diversities, Identities, Comparisons And The Vietnamese Case
Much interest has been devoted since the 1980s to the new urban, educated middle class in Southeast Asia which has emerged primarily as a result of stateled modernization and capitalist transformation. These processes have also been occurring recently in the former centralized socialist economies...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM Press)
2008
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| Online Access: | http://eprints.usm.my/40245/ http://eprints.usm.my/40245/1/VictorKing_MiddleClassinAsia.pdf |
| Summary: | Much interest has been devoted since the 1980s to the new urban, educated
middle class in Southeast Asia which has emerged primarily as a result of stateled modernization and capitalist transformation. These processes have also been
occurring recently in the former centralized socialist economies of Southeast Asia
mainland. However, there has not been a great deal of comparative region-wide
research on the new middle class and we still know very little about such
countries as Vietnam. As Lui proposes we must explore the "richness of class
analysis….by probing people's values, outlook, lifestyles, moral perspectives,
perceptions of social change and political choices" (2006: 47). As part of a
research project which examines the diversities and changing identities of the new
middle class in the region, this paper presents some initial thoughts on the
problems of defining and delimiting the middle orders of society and some
preliminary findings on the young educated middle class in the hitherto neglected
case of Vietnam. |
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