CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2013
| Author | Curteanu, Craita |
|---|---|
| Title | LIVING THE MIDDLE CLASS DREAM: THE CASE OF SUV CONSUMPTION IN ROMANIA |
| Summary | This thesis is focused on the ways in which SUVs are evocative for their owners’ politics of belonging to a middle class in Romania. Drawing on interviews conducted during February and March 2013, I argue that cars in general, and SUVs in particular, tell a story of middle class making among Romanian small entrepreneurs. I show that legitimation as a member of this category is claimed by the SUV owners interviewed by mobilizing narratives of morality, cultural knowledge, and practical competence. Stemming from recollections regarding their first cars, I portray how my interviewees’ trajectories of car ownership, unfolding from faulty to better and newer automobiles, convey a process of learning and adaptation to the standards of a perceived legitimate lifestyle inspired by a Western European model. Moreover, I explore my interviewees’ strategies of demonstrating belonging to a middle class, by connecting into their disenchanted accounts on the SUV purchase – a point where talk about cars becomes a matter of calculation of costs and benefits. Finally, I show that middle class is constituted through practices, at the level of SUV owners’ work lives. I illustrate how their position as legitimate middle class professionals is delineated through the work of boundary drawing between “worthy” and “unworthy” SUV owners and defined through a series of contrasts such as the ones between proper and improper SUV use, or moral and immoral uses of money. |
| Supervisor | Kowalski, Alexandra; Zentai, Violetta |
| Department | Sociology MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2013/curteanu_craita.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University