Professor of Economics Erol Balkan and Professor of Anthropology Emeritus Henry Rutz have co-authored “Reproducing Class: Education, Neoliberalism, and the Rise of the New Middle Class in Istanbul,” a text published in January by Berghahn Books.
Focusing on the families of Istanbul’s new middle class, the authors 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, according to the publisher. The authors offer a 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.
