This paper proposes a new cultural link between the middle class and democracy. In comparative democratization, scholars remain strongly wedded to economic-materialist understandings of the middle class. They define the middle class by income or occupation, but disagree on its role in democratization and weakly explain middle-class formation. In contrast, this paper reconstructs the cultural structures that intertextually link the language of class to the language of democracy. Middle-class discourse is undergirded by a stable set of binary codes through which social actors establish creative links to the discourses of the civil sphere. Embedded in the civil sphere, middle-class discourse takes on three institutional functions—specifying the terms of solidarity and exclusion, intersphere translation, and civil-regulatory power relatively independent of the civil sphere’s own institutions.

中文翻译：

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中产阶级作为一种文化结构：通过公民领域重新思考中产阶级的形成和民主

本文提出了中产阶级与民主之间的新文化联系。在比较民主化中，学者们仍然坚持对中产阶级的经济唯物主义理解。他们通过收入或职业来定义中产阶级，但对其在民主化中的作用存在分歧，并且对中产阶级的形成解释不力。相比之下，本文重构了将阶级语言与民主语言互文联系起来的文化结构。中产阶级的话语以一套稳定的二进制代码为基础，社会行为者通过这些代码与公民领域的话语建立创造性的联系。嵌入公民领域，中产阶级话语具有三种制度功能——具体化团结和排斥的术语、跨领域翻译、