The Questionable Middle Class

Abstract This article examines what the idea of a new or changing India signifies in the way it is experienced from a middle-class perspective. While the often-used adjectives of lower, new, and upper in terms of middle-class belonging seem to indicate economic difference, the article argues that it is more productive to think of this hierarchical structuring as primarily sociocultural in nature. The way studies have attempted to capture the size of the middle class offers important insight here. This article draws upon long-term fieldwork among lower or new middle-class men who hail from vernacular backgrounds and who are employed as fitness trainers in India. The gym floor not only offers an opportunity to make money but also to acquire sociocultural capital through interactions with clients. The upward mobility this facilitates, in which the men's own muscular bodies are key, underscores the porousness as well as the rigidity of middle-class boundaries.