Description
With the supports of middle-class living threatened-job security, quality education, home ownership, savings, ease of consumption-the means and meaning of "middle class" were thrown into question. The sector thus redefined itself through both class- and race-based claims of moral and cultural superiority and through privileged consumption, a definition the media underscored by continually addressing middle-class Brazilians as consumers-or rather, as consumers denied. In these times, adults became more flexible in employment, and put stakes in their children's expensive private education. They engaged in elaborate comparison shopping, stockpiling of goods, and financial strategizing. Ongoing desire for distinction and "first- world" modernity prompted these Brazilians to buy foreign goods through contraband, thereby defying state protectionist policy. Discontented with the constraints of the national economy, they welcomed neoliberalism.
By uncovering connections between culture and politics, O'Dougherty complicates understandings of the middle class as a social group and category. Illuminating the intricate relation between identity and local and global consumption, her work will be welcomed by students and scholars in anthropology and Latin American studies, and those interested in consumption, popular culture, politics, and globalization.
About the Author
Maureen O'Dougherty is a Research Fellow at the Institute on Race and Poverty, University of Minnesota.
Reviews
"An outstanding book. . . . The first extensive treatment in English of the problems of Brazilian modernity and consumerism."-Richard Wilk, Indiana University
"This fascinating and important book is based on a solid foundation of fieldwork and research. O'Dougherty introduces new paradigms and new approaches, and not just for Brazilianists."-Timothy Burke, Swarthmore College
Book Information
ISBN 9780822328940
Author Maureen O'Dougherty
Format Paperback
Page Count 280
Imprint Duke University Press
Publisher Duke University Press
Weight(grams) 549g