ABSTRACT

Despite its fuzziness, the term middle class has become increasingly attractive in the past two decades, not only among social scientists and market analysts but also as a term of self-description employed by upwardly mobile individuals. Research on middle classes in the Global South, and especially in Africa, confronts us with particular challenges. First, while conventional class theories take the nation-state as the obvious framework for defining class boundaries, African examples point to the importance of sub-national (as well as transnational) dimensions of class formation. Secondly, marriage ties and kin relations of upwardly mobile individuals in African societies often cut across class boundaries, resulting in ‘multi-class’ families and competing loyalties. The paper addresses these challenges by looking at the emergence of a national middle class in Ghana. More specifically, we discuss how social mobility and class formation play out in two different regions of what is today Ghana: a coastal region that since the seventeenth century has been drawn into global networks and was highly stratified by the end of the nineteenth century; and a marginalized savannah region with an egalitarian society until chieftaincy and education were introduced by the British colonizers in the early twentieth century. These regional disparities and resulting sub-national memberships intersect with the emergence of a national middle class. However, we argue that despite distinct regional trajectories, we are currently witnessing a certain ‘synchronisation’ of social stratification and the formation of a broader middle class that understands itself not only in regional, but national terms.

摘要

尽管中产阶级这个词很模糊，但在过去二十年中它变得越来越有吸引力，不仅在社会科学家和市场分析师中，而且还作为向上流动的个人使用的自我描述术语。对南半球尤其是非洲中产阶级的研究给我们带来了特殊的挑战。首先，虽然传统的阶级理论将民族国家作为定义阶级边界的明显框架，但非洲的例子指出了阶级形成的次国家（以及跨国）维度的重要性。其次，非洲社会中向上流动的个人的婚姻关系和亲属关系常常跨越阶级界限，导致“多阶级”家庭和相互竞争的忠诚。本文通过研究加纳全国中产阶级的出现来应对这些挑战。更具体地说，我们讨论了社会流动性和阶级形成如何在当今加纳的两个不同地区发挥作用：一个沿海地区，自 17 世纪以来一直被纳入全球网络，并在 19 世纪末高度分层；以及一个边缘化的萨凡纳地区，社会平等，直到二十世纪初英国殖民者引入酋长制和教育。这些地区差异和由此产生的次国家成员资格与国家中产阶级的出现相互交织。然而，我们认为，尽管区域发展轨迹不同，