The Uncertainty of Prosperity: Dependence and the Politics of Middle-Class Privilege in Maputo

ABSTRACT

In this essay, I examine the moral basis of a ‘middle class’ in Maputo, Mozambique, the narratives, forms of dependence and types of hegemony that the social hierarchy rests upon. I argue that the political and economic processes that have given rise to ‘new’ middle classes in the global south also create conditions of precariousness. In recent years, it has been argued that these ‘emerging middle classes’ are central for economic growth and the safeguarding of a stable, liberal order. The case of Mozambique complicates this assertion and demonstrates an occurrence now taking place across the globe. When the relationships of dependence and obligation and the narratives that justify them erode, the structures of power that may have once been mutually constitutive between an emerging middle class and the state can become damaging as the system they once upheld loses its legitimacy.

KEYWORDS:

• Middle class
• Frelimo
• narratives
• dependence
• prosperity

Acknowledgements

I thank Afia Afenah, Bjorn Bertelsen, Casey High, Edward Simpson, Jon Schubert and the anonymous reviewers for their careful reading and helpful suggestions. I also benefitted from presenting a draft of this essay at ‘The Making of the Middle Classes: Social Mobility and Boundary Work in Global Perspective' workshop held by re: work and Humboldt University, in Berlin, November 6–8 2014.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This research was made possible by financial assistance from the Crisis States Research Centre at the London School of Economics and the Department of Social Anthropology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. This paper is part of a grant entitled: ‘The Hot Lava Edge of Cultural Flows: Global Social Inequality and the Anthropology of Uncertainty, Contingency and Future Orientation' (NTNU).