AN ETHNOGRAPHIC DESCRIPTION OF LIFE-STYLES, CULTURE AND NEWLY EMERGED MULTIPLE DIMENSIONS OF INDIAN MIDDLE CLASS IN AN URBAN SETTING OF KOLKATA, WEST BENGAL

The purpose of this research is to understand the ?new Indian middle class?, as a class of life-styles and cultures of consumption and specific forms of capital under current neoliberal globalizing regime. This ethnographic endeavor particularly uses semi-structured and depth-interviews of purposively selected 7 (no. of) young professionals working in the constellations of multi and trans-national companies in New Town, Rajarhat, Kolkata and West Bengal. The interpretive study provides the thematic analysis of the competing ?capitals? in their lived ?fields? of education, work, identity enactments and consumption. The foci of the analysis emergent from the qualitative data are their educational fields, fields of self-care, practicing criteria of preference for certain employments, fields of consumption, assessments of the fields of securing social status or prestige, fields of negotiation with the traditions in their social life, and enacted social spaces to which they think to belong.