Talvez um dos cartoons mais interessantes que ja me cairam em maos, do cartunista catalao El Perich, que encontrei uma vez folheando um livro sobre historia quantitativa (minhas excusas por nao relatar aqui a fonte, simplesmente nao a guardei). Contra o reino das subjetividades que assola nossa disciplina, uma quase-ciencia, uma defesa bem-humorada do principio da demonstracao e da necessaria verificabilidade dos dados historicos. Sobre a malfalada classe media, vale a pena dar uma lida no Peter Stearns (em 1979!!), "The Middle Class: Toward a Precise Definition". E ele chama a atencao para apenas algumas das percepcoes sociais relacionadas a classe media, na tradicao inglesa majoritariamente situadas "mais no alto" da piramide social. Na nossa tradicao 'francesa' ou mediterranea, a(s) classe(s) media(s) sao, com frequencia, percebidas por um vies menos elitista e mais 'pequeno-muito pequeno-burgues', mais popular enfim (ao menos no mundo real, nao necessariamente entre os intelectuais de carreira). Os grifos sao meus. "The concept "middle class" is one of the most enigmatic yet frequent in the social sciences.(1) Historians, in this case no more vague, toss the term about with gay abandon. Think of what the word can connote: The triumphant industrialist, with his satellite professionals as allies, ultimately forming a new ruling class, revolutionary when needed but prone to a quick return to the policies of order and not revolutionary at all when aristocratic or Tory foes had been disposed of. Relatedly, a class imbued with strong cultural values which conveyed a personalized amalgam of Enlightenment-cum-Calvinist ideals and changed the mentality of society, through "social control," well beyond the class itself. But also the Nazis and anti-Semites, the fighters against modernity, and not only in Germany. Property owners but also nonowners who picked up a perhaps "false" but durable class consciousness. Finally, the pervasive bourgeois, a term applicable to both modernizers and anti-modernizers. The cultural philistine, the husband who slept, and may still sleep, at concerts he was dragged to by his wife. The avaricious early capitalist, the gaudy social climber, but also the reader of serialized romantic stories or, more recently, the housewife glued to soap operas. Images could be multiplied, but the point is clear. We're dealing with a peculiar beast and quite possibly with several beasts.Yet we have made little headway toward anatomical precision. The subject is fraught with ideological overtones, but few ideological stances have produced significant illumination. There are also disciplinary complications. When we are told that social stratification is the prime province of sociology,(2) the social scientific historian might be tempted to run up the white flag and wait for wisdom from on high before attempting his petty data manipulation. Or we could at best yield to the temptation of the conventional, fill-a-gap historian's gambit, of saying that not enough work has been done, that since we have a factual mountain Mohammed must move to it. It is true that we need more research. Really good histories of the middle class are rarer than studies of lower-class groups in such matters as family patterns; and for too many aspects of middle-class value systems