Workers Go Shopping In Argentina: The Rise Of Popular Consumer Culture [Paperback]

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.Natalia Milanesiois an associate professor of history at the University of Houston in Texas.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 ofYankee Don't Go Home!: Mexican Nationalism, American Business Culture, and the Shaping of Modern Mexico, 1920-1950