The first book on the middle class in early twentieth-century Latin
America to be published in English in a generation.
No social class has generated more controversy than the middle
class, and nowhere has that class been more controversial than in
Latin America. Once believed not to exist, then later the great
hope of the Alliance for Progress, the Latin American middle class
is often blamed for not fulfilling the entrepreneurial,
democratizing, progressive, or stabilizing role that others ascribe
to it. Yet never has a class so widely discussed been so little
studied and so poorly understood.
David Parker meets this challenge by combining the methods of
social historians with attention to language and the cultural
construction of meaning as he investigates how and why white-collar
workers in Peru's offices, banks, and stores began to define
themselves as members of a distinct middle class. He traces the
origins of this new class identity and shows the lasting impact the
employees' drive for preferential treatment had on Peruvian law,
politics, and culture.
This book provides a rich description of the lifestyle, values,
and attitudes of this rising middle class in their never-ending
quest for economic stability, respectability, and recognition in
Peruvian society. Through a series of deftly drawn biographical
profiles based on a variety of published and archival sources,
Parker succeeds in personalizing and bringing alive his
protagonists in a way that not only engages the reader but also
reveals the importance of personal agency often lost in
theoretically and ideologically driven studies of class.
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