This volume is designed first to provide a theoretical orientation and historical perspective on the rise of the middle classes in modern civilization, and second, to portray the social and political roles these classes have played and continue to play in the United States over the past century, with particular reference to the American class structure and political economy. Our method is necessarily both historical and sociological and offers an orientation for understanding contemporary American society. The essays included here were written between 1926 and 1982: they reveal both the genealogical development of sociological thought about the middle classes and the substantive content of these classes' life styles, status claims and political orientations. The present work stresses empirical studies and puts forth neither a theoretical interpretation nor a conceptual taxonomy; rather it delineates the emergence and the social and political significance of the new middle classes in relation to the classes, above and below, that preceded them.

Inhalt
Preface ; R.Jackall & A.J.Vidich - Acknowledgements - Notes on the Contributors - Introduction - PART I EMERGENCE OF THE NEW MIDDLE CLASSES: THEORETICAL PROBLEMS AND HISTORICAL CHANGES - The Discovery of the New Middle Classes; V. Burris - The New Middle Classes; E.Lederer & J.Marschak - Middle Class Notions and Lower Class Theory; H.Speier - The Growth of the New Middle Classes; A.Giddens - PART II THE STATUS SPHERE AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CLASSES - The Status Sphere; H.H.Gerth & C.Wright Mills - The Foundations of Social Rank and Respect; H.Speier - Bureaucracy and Masked Class Membership; H.Speier - Economic Class, Status and Personality; J.Bensman & A.J.Vidich - PART III THE NEW MIDDLE CLASSES IN THE UNITED STATES - The New Middle Class I; C.Wright Mills - The New Middle Class II; C.Wright Mills - The Transformation of the Black Middle Class; A.S.Evans Jr - Changes in the Life Styles of American Classes; J.Bensman & A.J.Vidich - PART IV THE NEW CLASS SYSTEM IN THE UNITED STATES LIFE STYLES AND POLITICAL ORIENTATIONS - The New Class System and Its Life Styles; J.Bensman & A.J.Vidich - Liberalism and the New Middle Classes ; A.J.Vidich & J.Bensman - The New Conservatism: Political Ideology and Class Structure; M.W.Hughey - The Politics of the Middle Class in a National Crisis: The Case of Watergate; A.J.Vidich - Class and Politics in an Epoch of Declining Abundance; A.J.Vidich - Index