As a collective effort, this volume locates the formation of the middle classes at the core of the histories of Latin America in the last two centuries. Featuring scholars from different places across the Americas, it is an interdisciplinary contribution to the world histories of the middle classes, histories of Latin America, and intersectional studies. It also engages a larger audience about the importance of the middle classes to understand modernity, democracy, neoliberalism, and decoloniality. By including research produced from a variety of Latin American, North American, and other audiences, the volume incorporates trends in social history, cultural studies and discursive theory. It situates analytical categories of race and gender at the core of class formation. This volume seeks to initiate a critical and global conversation concerning the ways in which the analysis of the middle classes provides crucial re-readings of how Latin America, as a region, has historically been understood.
Author(s): Mario Barbosa Cruz, A. Ricardo López-Pedreros, Claudia Stern
Series: Routledge Studies in the History of the Americas
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 524
City: New York
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Notes on the Contributors
Foreword
Chapter 1: Introduction: “For the First Time Ever”
The Middle Class and its Discontents: Theoretical Problematizations
Beyond the Elision Hypothesis: Narrative Problematizations
A Middle Class Worthy of its Name: Historical Problematizations
Notes
Part I: Liberalism, the Idea of Race, and Neoliberalism: Introduction to Part I
Notes
Chapter 2: “São Paulo is Modernity”: Middle-Class Identity and Narratives of Exceptionalism in Brazil
Regionalism, Transnationalism, and Middle-Class Identity in São Paulo
First, the Rehabilitated Historical Figure: The Bandeirante as Middle-Class Striver
Next, the Contested Meaning of a Political Epithet, Or… Who Are You Calling an Oligarch?
Bourgeois Industrialists in an Age of Italian Counts Or… Knowledge as Power (I)
And Now, the Urban Planner as Maker of the Middle Class: Knowledge as Power (II)
And Finally, the Uprising against Vargas: 1932: The Middle Class in Arms
The Rule of Law = Democracy?
The Middle Class: Makers of Fascism?
Notes
Chapter 3: Uneven Development and the Concept of the Middle Class: Costa Rica, 1890–1950
A Prehistory of the Costa Rican Middle Class: 1890–1930
The Emergence of the Middle Class : 1930–1940
An Anti-Communist Middle Class : The 1940s
Epilogue
Notes
Chapter 4: The Ordeal of Decency: A Perspective on Mexico City’s Urban Space and Middle Classes (1952–1966)
Introduction
Decency: Socio-spatial Order and Consumption
Decency, Sexuality, and Discontinuities of the Sociospatial Order
Conclusions
Notes
Chapter 5: Gender, Race, and the Evolution of Middle-Class Identity in the Mexico City Press, 1820–1900
Introduction
Imagining “Middle Class” in Post-Independence Mexico
Mexicanization of “Middle Class,” 1840-1870
Female Vulnerability as Middle-Class Precariousness
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 6: Escaping the Carimbas : An Intersectional Analysis of “Black” Middle-Class Trajectories in Colombia
Introduction
The Configuration of Colombia’s Black Middle Classes: When, Where, and How?
The Promises of the Liberal Republic: 1930–1950
Urban Dynamics and Intellectual Influences: 1950–1975
Tensions Between Class Identity and Ethno-Racial Identity: 1975–1985
Neoliberal Multiculturalism, Opening and Closing Doors: 1985–2000
Where Are the Black Middle Classes Headed in the New Millennium? By Way of a Conclusion
Notes
Part II: Labor, Consumption, and Political Disparities: Introduction to Part II
Notes
Chapter 7: Sales Knowledge, Labor Mobility, and Working-Class Identity: Store Clerks (Argentina, 1900–1940)
Who Were the Store Clerks?
Law 11.729 and the Consolidation of a Working-class Identity for Employees
Conclusions
Notes
Chapter 8: The Cost of Love: Middle Classes, Consumption, and Sentimentalism in Mexico (1880–1920)
Loving Advice: Rituals of Romance, Letters, and Gifts
The Market of Despair: From Love Talismans to Marriage Agencies
Long Live the Bride and Groom! Weddings Great and Small
Final Considerations
Notes
Chapter 9: Tango, Morality, and Nostalgia in the Making of a Middle-Class Subjectivity in Argentina
From the Fringes
Social Pretensions and Falling from Grace
The Barrio
Notes
Chapter 10: Public-Sector Employment, the Middle Classes, and Social Position in Mexico City in the Early 1900s
The Relative Social Positions of Employees
The Importance of Social Distinctions, Beyond Salaries
Secret Surveillance of Public-Sector Employees
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 11: “Cheerful, Attentive, and Polite”: Store Clerks and the Middle Class in Early-Twentieth-Century Mexico City
Knowledge in Class Practices: An Analytical Proposal
Clothing Store Spaces
Life As a Store Clerk in Mexico City
The Store Clerk’s Knowledge: An Experience of Class
Store Clerks’ Working Conditions As a Praxis of Class Identity
Conclusions
Notes
Part III: The State, Social Movements, and the Cold War: Introduction to Part III
Chapter 12: The Middle Classes and Anti-Communism During the Cárdenas Presidency in Mexico: Nationalist Dynamics in a Transnational Framework
The Disputes
Congresses and Publications
By way of a Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 13: “Tigers, Cholo-Jacobins, and Red Government Officials”: Roles and Discourses of the Radical Middle Class in Ecuador between 1895 and 1938
Reassessing the Signs of Inter-Class Political Connections
The Divisive Social Status of Radical Leaders and of “Cholo-Jacobins” in the Democratic Process
Building the Nation-State and Establishing a Militant Bureaucracy
Notes
Chapter 14: Towards a New Cultural Sociology of the Latin American Middle Class: Ecuador’s Middle-Class Revolution as a Collective Representation
Introduction
The Limits of a Materialism and the Promise of Cultural Sociology
Binary Oppositions and Sacred Decency
Narrating the Middle Class
The Moral Uses of the Middle Class in Ecuador, 1918–1978
The Middle Class and the Political Economy of the Oil Boom
New Discourses of Ecuadorian Democracy and the New Discourses of the Middle Class
“Hay Clase Media!” Los Forajidos and Revolution from the Middle
Ironies of Race, Region, and the Self-Indulgence of Politics
The Social Fact of Correa’s Middle-Class Support
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 15: Silences, Confessions, and Taboos: The Petite Bourgeoisie’s Dissident Memories of Political Radicalization in Bogotá
Contested Pasts—Neoliberal Memories
Dissident Memories—Creating Silences
Confessions
Taboos
“What happened to José Raquel Mercado was a Mistake” 47
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 16: “Young People Committed to the Motherland”: Middle-Class Masculinity, Radicalization, and the Fragmentation of the “Integral Chileans” in the 1970s
Introduction
The Incubator of Integral Chileans: National Spirit, Ideology and Knowledge
University: Between Democratic Ideals and Practices of Radicalization
From Revolution to Repression: The Reinventions of the Left-Wing Integral Chileans
Final Comments: The Integral Chilean and the Resignification of How “Young People Committed to the Motherland”
Notes
Part IV: Social Mobility, Neoliberal Discourses, and the “Pink Tide”: Introduction to Part IV
Notes
Chapter 17: A “Middle-Class Country”: Social Mobility, Progress, and Genealogical Origins in the Public Discourse in Argentina (2002–2015)
Times of Crisis, the Middle Class, and “Nouveau Pauvres”
From Restoring Upward Social Mobility to Returning to Core Values
The “Mediocre” Genealogy of a “Selfish” Class
Defending the Honor of Ancestors
Epilogue: A Genealogy for the Moral Rebirth of the Nation
Notes
Chapter 18: Middle-Class Sensorial: Conceptualizing the Experience of Inhabiting “the Middle” in Brazil’s Post-Neoliberal Public Housing
Introduction
From Classic Sociology to the Sensorial and Affective Dimensions of Class
“Developing a Class”
Spatial Sensorial
Temporal Sensorium
Socio-material Sensorium
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 19: Residential Practices of Three Generations of a Middle-Class Family: Mortgages, Honor, and Inequalities in Mexico City
Introduction
Remarks on the Methodology
The Pampered Children of the Revolution: The First Generation
The Pampered Children of the Revolution: Second Generation
Ruptures, Continuities, and Inequalities
Honor, Gender, and Mortgages
Those Condemned to Live in the Present: Third Generation
Crises and Currency Devaluations
The Winners
The Mortgagors
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 20: Class Transvestism in Chile: When the Poor Became Middle Class
Transvestite Identities
Middle-Class “Decency”
Top-Down Innovation
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 21: Taxonomy, Identity, Mode of Being, or Political Project?: Epistemologies of “Middle Class” in Latin America Since 1948
Prologue: Why Focus on the Middle Class? And How?
Taxonomy Versus Identity: Observer’s Gaze or Agent’s Self-Expression?
Mode of Being in the World or Project for Transforming the World
Self-Awareness and Triangulation: By Way of Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 22: From White-Collar Employment to Managerial Influence Among the Middle Class in Early-Twenty-First-Century Mexico City
Introduction
Membership of Mexico City’s Managerial Class in the Early Twenty-First Century
Creating Differences: Class as a Native Category
Marketing Manager, Transnational Consultancy Firm
The Middle Class: A Background
From White-Collar Worker to Manager in Mexico City during the Neoliberal Era
Classifying Through Perception and Exercising Power Through Influence
Conclusions
Notes
Chapter 23: Equality or Hierarchy? Solidarity with Those Above or Below?: Dilemmas of Gendered Self-Identification in a New Bolivian Middle Class
Introduction
Latin American Middle Classes: A Minority in the Global South
Struggles Over Competing Models of Upward Mobility
Newly-Middle Class Women Wrestle with Competing Models of Upward Mobility: Celia and Aide
Celia
Aide
Conclusion
Notes
Epilogue: “Was It Worth Coming?”: The Global Drama of Middle-Class Lives in Latin America
Notes
Bibliography
Index
