Brian P. Owensby, Intimate Ironies: Modernity and the Making of Middle-Class Lives in Brazil. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. vii + 332 pp. $45.00 cloth.; D. S. Parker, The Idea of the Middle Class: White-Collar Workers and Peruvian Society, 1900–1950. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998. vii + 266 pp. $49.50 cloth; $19.95 paper.

Abstract

John J. Johnson's Political Change in Latin America: The Emergence of the Middle Sectors (Stanford, 1958) concluded that the “middle sectors” would guide Latin Americans into a “golden age.” The golden age failed to materialize and in the process the Latin American middle classes came to be seen as anything but agents of progress. In particular, much of the Left saw the middle class as a dependent and reactionary force. In the 1980s, the continent's “lost decade,” reports of the middle class's imminent demise became common currency as hyperinflation and currency depreciation eroded already meager incomes. Today the middle class in Latin America continues to perfect its ability to survive against considerable economic odds. Until recently, social historians had paid little attention to the Latin American middle class. D. S. Parker's The Idea of the Middle Class and Brian P. Owensby's Intimate Ironies are timely and welcome studies of the much maligned yet little understood middle classes of Peru and Brazil, respectively. Both Owensby and Parker's studies concentrate on the first half of the twentieth century and on large metropolises: Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, and Lima. Parker roots his analysis in a detailed study of Lima's commercial employees, although he does not restrict it to them. Owensby's middle class is more encompassing and ranges from nonelite doctors and lawyers to clerks.