Along the Bolivian Highway: Social Mobility and Political Culture in a New Middle Class - by Shakow, Miriam

Abstract

Shakow, Miriam (2014) Along the Bolivian Highway: Social Mobility and Political Culture in a New Middle Class, University of Pennsylvania Press (Philadelphia, PA), ix + 259 pp. $65.00 hbk. There is much discussion among development economists about the recent ‘rise of the middle classes’ in the Global South. Do they exist? What is the monetary threshold for belonging to the middle class? How vulnerable are such groups to falling back into poverty? Are the new middle classes the drive behind the ‘emerging economies’? Miriam Shakow asks a different set of questions, equally if not more important, concerning the political positions of these groups. Are new middle classes, as expected within theories of democracy, shaping democratic politics, and if so, how? And, in relation to the Bolivian case under scrutiny, how do upwardly mobile Bolivians challenge the construction of Bolivia as a country divided in a ‘poor and indigenous’ majority on the one hand, and the ‘rich and elitist’ minority on the other? How do these groups relate to and influence the leftist-indigenist government of Evo Morales? Shakow's book is timely and provides an anthro-political analysis of who these new middle classes are, what they aspire to, and how they relate to local, regional and national politics. The desire to overcome poverty and marginality did not emerge with Evo Morales or revolutionary politics. Bolivians worked hard to access higher education and professional jobs, and to set up profitable businesses. Shakow examines in depth the lives of upwardly mobile families in Sacaba, a town located between the provincial city of Cochabamba and the main coca growing area of Chapare. Here, farmers made money by growing coca leaves until the ‘war on drugs’ made this an unprofitable and precarious business. Nevertheless, the children of those coca growers benefitted from the coca boom of the 1980s and 1990s, and were able to aspire to a different life than the one their parents had led. Their relative prosperity and urban lifestyle do not fit in the notion of a Bolivia irreconcilably divided along class and ethnic lines. With changing socio-economic status comes a change in ethnic identity; as elsewhere in the Andes, class and race are strongly intertwined and to overcome marginality one has to overcome indigeneity. The middling Sacabans, Shakow shows, want to distinguish themselves from uneducated and ‘backward’ indigenous neighbours, even if their own background and upbringing is not very different. This creates tensions in identities and alliances: as Sacabans want to be recognised as ‘better’ than the indigenous, it becomes politically difficult to identify with a movement that proposes to ‘redistribute’ resources back to the indigenous majority. The desire for upward mobility and ‘superiority over their friends and neighbours’ is difficult to square with ‘the imperative of social equality’ (p. 10). So, Morales' political platform does not appeal greatly to these new middle classes. At the same time, there is an uncomfortable feeling among many middling Sacabans that the MAS, Morales' party, is where they belong. Shakow argues that the MAS has reified the idea of a postcolonial bifurcation of identity and citizenship, overlooking those important groups that do not fit the binary anymore. Shakow also looks at important issues such as clientelism, betrayal and envy as political strategies by examining the political aspirations of individual Sacabans and their relations with their own communities as well as with national politics. The author has some interesting things to say about these in Chapters 4–6; however, I found her observations about the intimate politics of identity even more interesting. In Chapter 2, Shakow looks at upward mobility and changing class and ethnic identity within families, and explores the contradictions and tensions that develop as a consequence of the desire to overcome marginality and questions of social equality. Racism towards those perceived as ‘more Indian’ is reproduced within families and among lovers and couples, creating an uncomfortable mix of upward mobility and downward kicking within the home. These intimate politics of race and class are very gendered, as women tend to be perceived as ‘more Indian’ than men (De la Cadena, 1991). The majority of the protagonists of Along the Bolivian Highway are women. This should have enabled an analysis that takes into account gender as an essential ingredient in the reproduction of inequality, both at home as well as in national politics. Unfortunately, Shakow does not consider gendered processes in her otherwise excellent book. This failure to take gender analysis into account aside, Along the Bolivian Highway is an important contribution to understanding contemporary politics in Bolivia, as well as the changes and tensions that emerge with the rise of new middle classes in developing countries.