The issue of class identities and 'middle-classness' in contemporary Singapore.

Abstract

The primary goal of this paper is to gain a deeper understanding of class identities amongst the middle-class in Singapore and how they negotiate their identity against their consumption behaviour. Positioning the research in the context of capitalist and consumer-driven contemporary Singapore, I relied on Thorstein Veblen‟s „Theory of the Leisure Class‟ as an overarching framework to explore the process of the negotiation of class identities. Through interviews with twenty Singaporean households, findings reveal that the issue of class identities varied in the milieu of differing age groups. These findings are later linked to broader changes and eventually highlighted the continued existence of class in Singapore.