Economic Lives of Capitalist 'Post-Poverty': Mobility, Vulnerability and Middle-Class Emergence in Indonesia.

Abstract

This dissertation examines the emergence of a ‘new’ middle class in Indonesia – as a material and ideological phenomenon. Beginning with an intellectual history of ‘middle-classness’ as a recent indicator of development and poverty alleviation, I argue that the global middle class as a concept has been central to legitimising globally-integrated, capitalist-led growth, particularly as economic orthodoxy has shifted from the crass market-fundamentalism of early neoliberalism towards the increasingly participatory, inclusive and socially conscious paradigms of the ‘post-Washington Consensus’ (PWC). Since the turn of the century, the world’s major finance and development institutions have advocated for poverty alleviation, women’s empowerment and environmental sustainability, but also – more substantively and perhaps even revolutionarily – for labour rights, and for universal healthcare and social protection. Tracing these changes, I argue that perceived middle-class uplift has been central to this ‘new universalism’ and its claims about the mutually reinforcing nature of democratised growth, while demonstrating that these narratives have in fact facilitated and mystified expanding modes of commodification and the production of new, heightened socioeconomic insecurity. Although income and social mobility have become increasingly apparent, so too have new and intensified forms of precarity. Beyond exposing the tenuousness of ‘middle classness’ as a phenomenon in Indonesia and elsewhere, or arguing the inaccuracy and hypocrisy of institutions such as the World Bank and IMF, this dissertation seeks to grapple with the experiences of transformation that have taken place as a result of rapid growth, as well as the effects of mystified commodification on ordinary people’s sense of wellbeing and political possibility.