Bobo (socio-economic group)


Bobo is a portmanteau word used to describe the socio-economic bourgeois-bohemian group in France, the French analogue to the English notion of the "champagne socialist". The term is used extensively in Paris, France, where it originates. The geographer Christophe Guilluy has used the term to describe France's elite class, who he accuses of being responsible for many of France's current problems. The term was originally introduced into the English language by the cultural commentator David Brooks to describe the 1990s descendants of the yuppies in the book Bobos in Paradise. Brooks describes Bobos as "highly educated folk who have one foot in the bohemian world of creativity and another foot in the bourgeois realm of ambition and worldly success".