The idea of the middle class
Subtitle: white-collar workers and Peruvian society, 1900-1950
By: D.S. Parker.
Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: University Park, Pa
Language: eng
Number of pages: 266
Subjects: Middle class -- Peru.; White collar workers -- Peru.; Peru -- Social conditions.
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.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [245]-259) and index.