Workers Go Shopping in Argentina: The Rise of Popular Consumer Culture

by Natalia Milanesio

Overview

In 1951 an Argentine newspaper announced that the standard of living of workers in Argentina was “the highest in the world.” More than half a century later, Argentines still look back to the mid-twentieth century as the “golden years of Peronism,” a time when working people, who had struggled to make ends meet a few years earlier, could now buy ready-made clothing, radios, and even big-ticket items like refrigerators. Milanesio explores this period marked by populist politics, industrialization, and a fairer distribution of the national income by analyzing the relations among consumers, consumer goods, manufacturers, advertising agents, and Juan Domingo Perón’s government (1946–1955).

Combining theories from the anthropology of consumption, cultural studies, and gender studies with the methodologies of social, cultural, and oral histories, Milanesio shows the exceptional cultural and social visibility of low-income consumers in postwar Argentina along with their unprecedented economic and political influence. Her study reveals the scope of the remarkable transformations fueled by the new market by examining the language and aesthetics of advertisement, the rise of middle- and upper-class anxieties, and the profound changes in gender expectations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826352439
Publisher:	University of New Mexico Press
Publication date:	03/01/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Natalia Milanesio is assistant professor of history at the University of Houston.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 Industry, Wages, and the State: The Rise of Popular Consumer Culture 16

Chapter 2 Surveys and Campaigns: Discovering and Reaching the Worker-Consumer 51

Chapter 3 Commercial Culture Becomes Popular: Advertising and the Challenges of a Changing Market 83

Chapter 4 "How Can a Garbage Collector Be on the Same Level as We Are?": Upper- and Middle-Class Anxieties over Working-Class Consumers 123

Chapter 5 Love in the Time of Mass Consumption 158

Chapter 6 Tales of Consumers: Memory and Working-Class Material Culture 190

Epilogue Consumer Culture Today 220

Notes 233

Selected Bibliography 277

Index 295

Editorial Reviews

"Eloquently explains how the Argentine working class made a grand entrance into a pre-existing world of consumption during the period of Juan Domingo Perón. Milanesio convincingly argues that Perón supported such entrance because the making of workers into consumers complemented his plan for industrial growth, reinforced his image as an advocate of the working class, and served as a source of political legitimacy. Once developed as a social and cultural category, workers-consumers transformed advertising—giving this field a national flare—and created a distinctive working-class consumer identity that democratized access to public space, altered gender norms, and threatened middle-class status and conservative factions of Argentine society."—Julio Moreno, author of Yankee Don't Go Home!: Mexican Nationalism, American Business Culture, and the Shaping of Modern Mexico, 1920-1950

"Natalia Milanesio's fascinating account of working-class consumer culture generates a series of eye-opening insights that will reshape the dominant interpretations of Peronism. Her analysis of advertising as well as her attention to shifting gender roles constitute original contributions to the scholarship on what many historians consider the critical juncture in the modern history of Argentina. Equally impressive is her expert use of oral history to uncover what expanded consumption meant for workers themselves. This is a terrific book that is a must read for all historians of modern Argentina and for anyone interested in consumption and consumerism throughout Latin America."—Matthew B. Karush, author of Culture of Class: Radio and Cinema in the Making of a Divided Argentina, 1920-1946

From the Publisher