1st Edition

The Middle Classes in Latin America Subjectivities, Practices, and Genealogies

524 Pages 17 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

524 Pages 17 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

524 Pages 17 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

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... Read more

Foreword

Gilbert M. Joseph

1. Introduction: "For the First Time Ever"

A. Ricardo López-Pedreros

Part I: Liberalism, the Idea of Race, and Neoliberalism

Introduction to Part I

Claudia Stern

2. "São Paulo is Modernity": Middle-Class Identity and Narratives of Exceptionalism in Brazil

Barbara Weinstein

3. Uneven Development and the Concept of the Middle Class: Costa Rica, 1890–1950

George I. García-Quesada

4. The Ordeal of Decency: A Perspective on Mexico City’s Urban Space and Middle Classes (1952–1966)

Sara Minerva Luna Elizarrarás

5. Gender, Race, and the Evolution of Middle-class Identity in the Mexico City Press, 1820-1900

Susie S. Porter  

6. Escaping the Carimbas: An Intersectional Analysis of "Black" Middle-Class Trajectories in Colombia

Mara Viveros-Vigoya

Part II: Labor, Consumption, and Political Disparities

Introduction to Part II

Claudia Stern

7. Sales Knowledge, Labor Mobility, and Working-Class Identity: Store Clerks (Argentina, 1900–1940)

Graciela Queirolo

8. The Cost of Love: Middle Classes, Consumption, and Sentimentalism in Mexico (1880–1920)

María Graciela León Matamoros

9. Tango, Morality, and Nostalgia in the Making of a Middle-Class Subjectivity in Argentina

Enrique Garguin

10. Public-Sector Employment, the Middle Classes, and Social Position in Mexico City in the Early 1900s

Mario Barbosa Cruz

11. "Cheerful, Attentive, and Polite": Store Clerks and the Middle Class in Early-Twentieth-Century Mexico City

Cristina Sánchez Parra

Part III: The State, Social Movements, and the Cold War

Introduction to Part III

Mario Barbosa Cruz

12. The Middle Classes and Anti-Communism During the Cárdenas Presidency in Mexico: Nationalist Dynamics in a Transnational Framework

Sebastián Rivera Mir

13. "Tigers, Cholo-Jacobins, and Red Government Officials": Roles and Discourses of the Radical Middle Class in Ecuador Between 1895 and 1938

Valeria Coronel

14. Towards a New Cultural Sociology of the Latin American Middle Class: Ecuador’s Middle-Class Revolution as a Collective Representation

Celso M. Villegas

15. Silences, Confessions, and Taboos: Petit Bourgeoise’s Dissident Memories of Political Radicalization in Bogotá 

A. Ricardo López-Pedreros

16. "Young People Committed to the Motherland": Middle Class Masculinity, Radicalization, and the Fragmentation of the "Integral Chileans" in the 1970s

Claudia Stern

Part IV: Social Mobility, Neoliberal Discourses, and the "Pink Tide"

Introduction to Part IV

A. Ricardo López-Pedreros

17. A "Middle-Class Country": Social Mobility, Progress, and Genealogical Origins in the Public Discourse in Argentina (2002–2015)

Sergio E. Visacovsky

18. Middle-Class Sensorial: Conceptualizing the Experience of Inhabiting "the Middle" in Brazil’s Post-Neoliberal Public Housing

Moisés Kopper

19. Residential Practices of Three Generations of a Middle-Class Family: Mortgages, Honor, and Inequalities in Mexico City

Claudia Zamorano

20. Class Transvestism in Chile: When the Poor Became Middle Class

Azun Candina Polomer

21. Taxonomy, Identity, Mode of Being, or Political Project?: Epistemologies of "Middle Class" in Latin America Since 1948

David S. Parker

22. From White-Collar Employment to Managerial Influence Among the Middle Class in Early-Twenty-First Century Mexico City

Terioska Gámez

23. Equality or Hierarchy? Solidarity with Those Above or Below?: Dilemmas of Gendered Self- Identification in a New Bolivian Middle Class

Miriam Shakow   

Epilogue: "Was It Worth Coming?": The Global Drama of Middle-Class Lives in Latin America

Brian Owensby

Biography

Mario Barbosa Cruz is Professor in the Humanities Department at Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana.

A. Ricardo López-Pedreros is Professor of History at Western Washington University

Claudia Stern is Research Associate at The Latin American Centre for the History of Housing CEIHVAL and lecturer at the MEUVAL at the Architecture, Design and Urban Studies Faculty at Universidad de Buenos Aires, FADU-UBA.