Middle classes are by definition ambiguous, raising all sorts of paradoxical questions, perceived and real, about their power and place relative to those above and below them in a class-structured society. Focusing on families of the new middle class in Istanbul, the authors of this study address questions about the social construction of middle-class reality in the context of the rapid changes that have come about through recent economic growth in global markets and the global diffusion of information technology. After 1980, Turkey saw a structural transformation from state-owned and managed industry, banking, and media and communications to privatization and open markets. The idea of being middle class and the reality of middle-class practices became open for negotiation and interpretation. This study therefore offers a particularly interesting case study of an emergent global phenomenon known as the transnational middle class, characterized by their location of work in globalizing cities, development of transnational social networks, sumptuary consumption habits, and residences in gated communities. As the authors show, this new middle class associates quality education, followed by property and lifestyle issues, with the concept of a comfortable life.

Henry Rutz is Emeriti Professor of Anthropology at Hamilton College. He is editor of The Politics of Time and co-editor of The Social Economy of Consumption. His articles on nation-making, time and culture, consumption and economic change appear in American Ethnologist, Comparative Studies in Society and History, the Encyclopedia of Time, and as chapters in numerous books. Erol M. Balkan is Professor of Economics at Hamilton College and Visiting Scholar at Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey. He is the author of International Bank Lending and Country Risk, and numerous articles that have appeared in Applied Economics, Journal of Macroeconomics, Public Choice and Public Finance Quarterly. His research interests are globalization, and political economy of the Middle East. He is currently working on the rise of Islamic middle class in Turkey.