ZEIT: So does the precariously feeling doctoral student with friends in California, Paris and Barcelona today actually belong to the ruling class? Reckwitz: “In the exaggeration yes, he belongs culturally to the new middle class, even if the income may currently be low. This lifestyle also shapes the cosmopolitan feeling of cultural self-empowerment: One feels entitled, for example, to travel the world, to culturally appropriate the foreign. One has the claim to structure one’s own life aesthetically and ethically: the healthy eating, the care of the body, diverse leisure and interesting profession, the good schools for the children, from whom one expects more, as well as from the partner. The demanding attitude towards life is typical for the new middle class.”
– Andreas Reckwitz (Prof. for Comparative Cultural Sociology at the European University Viadrina, Frankfurt/Oder) in Die Zeit, No. 41, October 5, 2017