Greece's Middle Class as a Social and Political Actor

History and Evolution

Panayis Panagiotopoulos, Lena Kallergi

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN:
  9783031985003
• eBook ISBN:
  9783031985010
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book provides a comprehensive account and conceptualisation of the history and development of the middle class in Greece. What is the history of the middle class in the West after World War II? How is it related to consumerism, individualism and emancipation? How did it reach this, now unanimously admitted, existential crisis? Which is the historical course of the middle class in Greece from the 1960s onwards? Through which experiences was the social contract of the middle class during the Metapolitefsi drawn up? How is it that the Greek family acts as the middle class’ natural habitat and its condemnation at the same time? Is there still a middle class identity in Greece or is it scattered in rival micro-communities of people who can hardly co-exist today, in a space of social and emotional desolation? Will the pandemic crisis validate the inequalities that govern the relationships among the members of the old middle class in Greece or will it prove to be a chance for a new social and cultural convergence?

Table of contents

• Reform and Transition in the Mediterranean
• Greece's Middle Class as a Social and Political Actor
• Foreword and Acknowledgements
• Contents
• 1. Introductory Observations
• 2. The Social Emotions of the Middle Class in the Western World—Drafting a Historical Framework
• 3. What the Middle Class Is and What It Wants—The Social Space of the Middle Class in Greece Today
• 4. The “Typical” Greek Family—Mechanics of Social Consent in the Middle Strata of the Metapolitefsi
• 5. The Identity of the Middle Class in an Insecure Greece—Division, New Inequalities, Negative Polyvalence
• 6. Private Sphere, Middle Class and Individual Experience—Negations and Concealments in the Social Sciences
• 7. Concluding Remarks
• Bibliography
• Index