The idea of the middle class : white-collar workers and Peruvian society, 1900-1950
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The idea of the middle class : white-collar workers and Peruvian society, 1900-1950
Pennsylvania State University Press, c1998
- : pbk
Available at 6 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
-
Library, Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization図
LSPE||323.3||I112769865
Note
Bibliography: p. [245]-259
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
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.
by "Nielsen BookData"