54 International The EconomistNovember 7th 2020
2 restaurants and vintage boutiques. At the
top were predictable spots such as Brigh-
ton, in England, and Portland, Oregon, on
the west coast of America. But the hipsters
have spread much farther afield.
At the Lion Café in West Kabul, young
trendies slurp coffee beneath paintings by
local artists. “Sometimes you need a break
from your own culture,” says Karim Ka-
rimi, a 22-year-old law student, who takes
his laptop there to work. “It is joyful when
you can find that in your own country,” he
says. Even Goma, a city in conflict-ridden
eastern Congo, boasts Le Petit Chalet,
which serves quinoa protein bowls as well
as “latte macchiatos”. In Bangui, the capital
of the Central African Republic, a place at
least as war-torn as eastern Congo, Le
Grand Café features exposed brickwork
(the café does still rely on freeze-dried Nes-
café; global gentrification has its limits).How did the hipster burn his tongue?
The style, all “raw wood tables, exposed
brick, and hanging Edison bulbs”, has been
termed “AirSpace” by Kyle Chayka, an
American writer. Sajith Pai, a venture capi-
talist in Delhi, describes it as “the bastard
child of ikea, Starbucks and Apple”. Its pur-
pose is to communicate to potential cus-
tomers that there will be a certain level of
quality; that the coffee or haircut will meet
some global standard. “You can call it reas-
surance design,” he says.
Wealthier Indians decorate their own
homes with “slightly old furniture, hand
looms, that sort of thing”, not spartan brick
and stripped-down wood, says Mr Pai. But
they seek out hipster design in the bars and
cafés of places such as Delhi and Mumbai
because it signals their membership of a
global elite. Mr Pai reckons the biggest con-
sumers of this style are not the super-rich
but the class just beneath them—the up-
per-middle class, who cannot stretch to
Bentleys or private jets, but can afford
plane tickets and posh coffees.
Both the rich and middle class are grow-
ing in numbers. According to the World
Bank, the share of the world’s population
living on more than $10 per day (at 2011 pur-
chasing-power parity)—enough money to
buy things other than food and shelter—
has swelled from less than a quarter two
decades ago to almost two-fifths in 2017.
The bulk of the growth has been in East
Asia, but the figure increased in every re-
gion (see chart). The Brookings Institution,
a think-tank, estimated in 2018 that the
number of rich people (those living on
more than $110 a day) will grow by 50%, or
100m people, by 2030. The global middle
class (which it also defines as those on
more than $10 a day) will increase to almost
two-thirds of the world’s population.
Such people are more likely than they
were to be urbanites. Over half the world’s
population now live in cities, according tothe World Bank. Not everyone in poor-
world cities (or even those in rich ones) will
be able to afford regular flat whites or visits
to craft-beer bars. But cities create high-
paying specialist jobs, so some will. That
allows specialist tastes to flourish. In Ken-
ya, Eoin Flinn, the Irish ceoof 254 Brewing,
a craft-beer company (named after Kenya’s
dialling code), says that his firm has ex-
perimented with beers from a “Mexican
pineapple sour” to a “Nitro Stout”. The buy-
ers are middle-class Kenyans bored with of
the bog-standard lagers that were until re-
cently the only option.
This class of people is more global liter-
ally, too. There are 272m migrants world-
wide, according to the International Orga-
nisation for Migration (iom), a unbody.
That figure represents just 3.5% of the
world’s population. But it is at an all-time
high. And it is already higher than the iom’s
predictions for 2050 made in 2003. Some
are refugees. Many more—nearly two-
thirds—are economic migrants.
Both groups contribute to the globalisa-
tion of hipsterism. While abroad they ac-
quire new tastes and money which they
then bring home. In Afghanistan many of
the hottest new businesses, such as the
Lion Café, are founded by Afghans who pre-
viously fled their country. The same is true
in Somalia—a country with a population of
15m, but a diaspora of 2m. Mogadishu is not
an easy place to get a posh coffee—but it is
now possible, thanks to Somali returnees.
With travel comes education and thus
exposure to a global culture of trendiness.
Between 1975 and 2017 the number of stu-
dents studying outside their home country
increased from 800,000 to almost 5m.
Their ranks have swelled even faster this
millennium—the figure increased by a
fifth between 2012 and 2016 alone.
But it is not just travelling abroad for
education that has increased. Global edu-
cation options at home have, too. The
American University of Afghanistan, in-spired by the American University of Bei-
rut, was established in Kabul in 2004. Its
professors include foreigners and Afghans
educated abroad. Courses are taught in
English, not Dari or Pushtu, Afghanistan’s
two predominant languages.
Yet the biggest driver of late has surely
been the internet. It enables would-be
trendsetters to access information about
the latest fashions free of charge, at least
those who can read English and afford mo-
bile-phone data. Worldwide, the propor-
tion of people with a broadband subscrip-
tion has nearly doubled since 2010. In only
a few countries, such as Eritrea and North
Korea, is fast mobile internet not widely
available in big cities. Restaurant designers
and hair stylists from Kabul to Bangui can
take inspiration from Instagram; so can
their consumers. In Afghanistan a fast-
growing sector is e-commerce, mostly of
Chinese “drop-shipped” goods, which re-
tailers order straight from the factory and
sell via Facebook. Where commerce
spreads, so does culture.
What does the rise of this class mean? A
class of people who buy into a common
cult of mid-century furniture and banal
contemporary art do not always endear
themselves to their fellow citizens. Even in
rich countries, they cluster in cities which
tend to vote for left or liberal-leaning par-
ties. And even in those places—where they
are accused of “gentrification” or worse—
they are not always welcome. The rise of
such a style hints at an urban-rural divide
that is growing all over the world.He drank his cortado before it was cool
Yet in rich countries these days being a hip-
ster is hardly a rebellion—the culture has
spread so relentlessly in big cities it is prac-
tically conformist. A somewhat tongue-in-
cheek mathematics study published last
year by Brandeis University found that
even “pure anti-conformist[s] systemati-
cally taking their decisions with a tenden-
cy to oppose the majority” can end up mak-
ing the same decisions as everybody else.
These days it would be far braver for an en-
trepreneur in New York or Copenhagen to
start a business with plastic tables and staff
sporting chinos and polo-shirts.
That is not true in many poor countries,
and especially not in Kabul, where univer-
sities and schools are frequent targets of at-
tack, most recently on November 2nd. At
Hairport, the barber shop in Kabul, Mr Zia
says that the Taliban returning to power is
his greatest fear. Before getting into his
own business, he studied English in Paki-
stan and then worked with the American
army. He likes the idea of the rest of the
world. But he says, “I love my country,” and
does not want to leave. Afghanistan’s fu-
ture is uncertain. If the Taliban come back,
“I am planning to run away.” Not everyone
with a beard is a good omen. 7Two espressos, please
Population living on more than $10 a day*, %Source:WorldBank *At 2011 purchasing-powerparity806040200
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Sub-Saharan AfricaSouthAsiaLatin
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