India’s Middle Class: New Forms of Leisure, Consumption and Prosperity

This book examines the complexities of lifestyles of the upwardly mobile middle classes in India in the context of economic liberalization in the new millennium. Rich in ethnographic material, the work is based on empirical case-studies of urban, cosmopolitan India (through interviews and participatory observation), research material (such as grey literature, lifestyle magazines, homepages, advertisements), and illustrations (color photographs and posters). It analyzes new social formations and aspirations, modes of consumption and ways of being in contemporary urban India, offering a model of how urban India might be studied and understood in a transnational and transcultural context.

Christiane Brosius is Professor of Visual and Media Anthropology at Heidelberg University, Germany.