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The relationship between structural change and new conflicts has also been viewed from another perspective. A number of scholars have stressed the fact that social change has produced a new social stratum – the so‐called new middle class. According to this point of view, this class is able, as a result of the resources it controls and of its position, to play a central role in new conflicts. For some time, analyses of postindustrial society have revealed, in parallel with the growth of the administrative/service sector in society, the emergence of social groups that stand out, because of their level of education, the roles they play, and their specific social location, from the traditional middle classes (Bell 1973; Gouldner 1979; Goldthorpe 1982; Lash and Urry 1987; Scott 1990). The new middle class, according to these analyses, is constituted from sectors of the population that tend to be employed in the service sector: they are highly educated, yet are not comparable with managers or traditional professionals. As a result of their technical and cultural competence and of their economic‐functional position, members of the new middle class have been considered as more likely to mobilize in conflicts of the new type we have just described: that is, to fight against technocrats, public and private agencies engaged in the dissemination of information and in the construction of consensus, the military and the apparatus responsible for social control. This argument has been presented on numerous occasions in recent years, and several investigations have confirmed the persistent presence of the new middle class among sympathizers and activists of the new movements.¹³

However, it is unclear whether the link between the new middle class, new movements, and new types of conflict effectively demonstrates the existence of a specific structural base for these types of conflict. The presence en masse of the new middle class in protest movements could, in fact, simply reflect the traditional inclination of the intellectual middle class to participate in any type of conflict (Bagguley 1995a) given their greater confidence in their own rights and capacity to speak up and participate in political life (Bourdieu 1984). From this perspective, the reference to specific structural contradictions at the base of new conflicts somewhat loses consistency. It is, rather, the case that belonging to the middle class, on the one hand, facilitates the taking up of concerns that are generically favorable to public involvement; and on the other, puts at one’s disposal individual resources and competences that can be spent in various types of political action.

In effect, comparative analysis of political participation has revealed on numerous occasions that variables of a sociodemographic type tend to explain with equal efficacy both unconventional participation (particularly widespread among movement sympathizers and activists) and conventional participation. There is, for example, a strong correlation between two factors that are usually regarded as indicators of the new middle class – youth and a high level of education – and various types of political attitudes and/or political participation (Barnes et al. 1979; Opp 1989, Chapter 7; Norris 2002, 201 ff.). Intellectuals have traditionally constituted the leadership of ethnic movements (Smith 1981). Furthermore, a comparison of political ecology and more traditional environmentalist currents showed that activists from the new middle class were present in equal measure in both sectors, in spite of the difficulty to identify conservation groups as new social movements (Diani 1995, p. 58).

Rather than on peculiar class dynamics, the undeniable relationship between membership in the new middle class and involvement in some types of protest movements might well be dependent on yet other factors. For example, it might be the outcome of the enormous rise in access to higher education, which again originated in the 1960s. More specifically, higher education might not only provide people with distinctive intellectual skills; it might also foster the growth of an egalitarian and anti‐authoritarian set of values, which are overrepresented among at least some sectors of the new middle class (Rootes 1995). Alternatively, youth radicalism might be related to generational experiences, as the current members of the new middle classes have all been exposed to that particular combination of social conditions, consisting of the end of the Cold War and the spread to the middle classes of unprecedented economic prosperity (Pakulski 1995, p. 76). Or there might be lifecycle effects, as younger people’s political involvement might be dependent on their biographical availability, given their more uncertain status, their still unsettled professional life, and their greater independence from family and community linkages (Piven and Cloward 1992).

Moreover, the notion of middle class risks comprising quite heterogeneous social sectors: those who work in the sector of culture and personal services and those who fulfill managerial or other technocratic functions risk remaining unclear; the sectors of the new middle class that are closer to the problems of the management of organizations (managers) and those who, instead, draw their legitimacy and their status from being controllers of professional resources, independent of specific organizational structures (professionals) (Kriesi 1993, pp. 31–32). To evaluate appropriately the importance of the new middle class in social movements, it is useful, therefore, to differentiate between its internal components. Taking inspiration from Wright (1985), who regarded classes as defined by different combinations of “assets in the means of production, organizational assets and skills or credentials,” Hanspeter Kriesi identified the distinctive characteristic of the new middle class in the fact that it exercises some control over organizational resources and/or over professional skills, but does not possess the means of production (Kriesi 1993, p. 28; see also Kriesi 1989a). In particular, he suggested looking at three different sectors of the new middle class: alongside the “sociocultural specialists” are managers and those who fulfill clearly technical roles. This last group includes administrative and commercial personnel from public and private organizations, technical specialists – some highly qualified and others less so – and those working in “protective services” (the police, the army, civil protection organizations, and the like). Even the wave of anti‐austerity protests have been interpreted as “middle class” phenomena. In fact, mobilizations have been presented by some observers as a manifestation of “a new middle‐class politics – democratic, environmentalist – whose global import is predicted to grow” (Yörük and Yüksel 2014, p. 103).

The awareness of the various components of the new middle class and the critical evaluation of their impact on political participation, alongside that of those belonging to the traditional classes (the old middle class and the working class), help to interpret more accurately the relationship between class condition and (new) forms of participation. Analysis of environmentalist militancy (Cotgrove and Duff 1980; Jamison, Eyerman, and Cramer 1990; Dalton 1994, Chapter 5; Diani 1995) noted that those filling the highest positions in groups engaged in this kind of activity were not only highly educated and – in the broadest sense – members of the middle class, but also brought specific competences to bear on the work of the group. Analyses of the link between individual class location and political behavior have certainly brought to light a series of relevant characteristics of new forms of political participation. They have, in particular, provided important information about old and new social movement activists and sympathizers. In doing so, however, they have postulated a direct link between the structural position of individuals and collective action that is by no means clear‐cut. In fact, while it is possible to look at classes as aggregates of subjects who occupy analogous positions in the system of social stratification, in terms of the resources they control, the prestige they enjoy, and their social opportunities, this is not necessarily an appropriate strategy when dealing with the problem of collective action.

Alternatively, it is advisable to analyze classes as collective actors with a specific identity and self‐awareness, linked to other social groups by relationships of a cooperative or conflicting nature. In this perspective, class exists only in circumstances where people mutually recognize and are recognized as part of a distinctive social group, if specific interests and solidarity between the occupants of particular social positions have been identified, and if, on this basis, specific forms of collective action are to be promoted (Thompson 1963; Tilly 1978; Touraine 1981).

Conditions favoring the return of various forms of status politics seem to have been reproduced. In these, the central role is taken by social groups brought together by certain levels of prestige and specific moral codes (Turner 1988; Eder 1993). Telling against the more structural version of the middle‐class thesis, the attention paid by the middle class to its own group identity and positioning is certainly not a characteristic exclusive to recent mobilizations (Calhoun 1993). As the historical experience of the anti‐alcohol movement reminds us (Gusfield 1963), the middle class has distinguished itself over time by its continual attention to moral codes, socially acceptable rules of conduct, and principles defining the “good life.”

Reasons for this attitude are to be found in the historically ambiguous positioning of the middle classes between the industrial bourgeoisie and the working class. Indeed, the petite bourgeoisie came to focus on symbolic production and on the defense of its own social status as a result of its uncertain place in the class system. For similar reasons, they may have felt the need to differentiate themselves from the principal social groups, and particularly from those – the industrial proletariat, throughout the twentieth century – that most closely threatened their prestige (Turner 1994; Calhoun 1993; Eder 1993, 1995). At the same time, there are reasons to argue that substantial differences separate many recent examples of lifestyle politics from the traditional version of status politics. As Featherstone (1987) noted, reference to values and lifestyles does not necessarily characterize distinctive groups with specific identities and long‐established structures. Actors involved in collective action may actually share little, apart from the common reference to a given set of values and preferences.

The relationship between new middle class and working class is not any clearer, nor has it been the subject of massive in‐depth investigation. In the case of the Netherlands study by Kriesi, it seems, for example, that even belonging to the working class could facilitate mobilization in new movements, particularly as far as younger people are concerned. Thus, there would appear to be at least a partial convergence in the new movements of those social groups which were already particularly active in “historical” opposition movements: there is a certain continuity, in other words, between “old” and “new” forms of class opposition. Also in the global justice movement, a heterogeneous social base has been highlighted as an innovative feature or an enhancement by comparison to movements of the past (Andretta et al. 2003).

In sum, there is no evidence that the material and redistributive dimension has lost all significance in conflicts in which contemporary, nonworking‐class movements are protagonists. For example, mobilizations for the development of collective services in urban areas and for urban renewal have certainly been determined by powerful concerns with collective and nonmaterial goods, such as those associated with the quality of life. However, they have also focused on the redistribution of material resources, placing the social groups most penalized by transformations in industrial activity and by processes of urban renewal in opposition to economic groups that were the protagonists and promoters of these processes (Castells 1977). These struggles have often seen the emergence of new alliances between working‐class and community groups (Brecher and Costello 1990). Furthermore, forms of collective action have emerged based on conditions of particular unease, concerned, for example, with the struggle against “new poverties.” Movements and mobilizations of homeless people have developed (Cress and Snow 1996); initiatives supporting the unemployed and marginal groups have sprung up everywhere, often in close collaboration with the voluntary sector (Bagguley 1991). In all these cases, the conflict has been concerned, once again, not only with a general notion of the quality of life, but with the allocation of material rewards among different social groups. Attention to social justice and material conditions (such as poverty) has become – as often mentioned – central in the recent wave of protest against neoliberal globalization.