Entre el cielo y el suelo: Las identidades elásticas de las clases medias (Santiago de Chile, 1932–1962)

Abstract

This is a cultural history of middle-class identity in Santiago de Chile, particularly in the suburb of Ñuñoa, during the period that Claudia Stern sees as the apogee of state-led modernization. Based on an analysis of middle-class practices, representations, and discourses, Stern argues that while the Chilean middle class was the main beneficiary of national developmentalist policies, competing middle-class identities were more in tension with one another than in harmony. She claims that by the end of her period, these tensions increased as members of the middle class became more individualistic and less committed to the social good.The book is organized in five parts that allow Stern to interrogate the urban middle class in different ways. The first part presents her theoretical approach, with her emphasis on the dynamic relations between the middle class and other segments of society as well as between different sectors of the middle class. The second part presents depictions of the middle class in the press and uses a range of sources, from comic books to intellectually high-minded articles, to argue that the Chilean middle-class identity was “weak,” and men were especially likely to reject a middle-class identity, but the middle class was nevertheless increasingly visible (p. 102). The third part focuses on a single secondary school in Ñuñoa, the Liceo Manuel de Salas, to examine the fraught relation between the institutional goal of instilling a social sensibility among the pupils and parental assumptions about education as the road to economic and social advancement. Part 4 recounts how central government policies helped make Ñuñoa into a middle-class community and how home life in Ñuñoa reveals the central role of women in managing the gradual transformation of the domestic space. Finally, part 5 recounts the preparations for the 1962 World Cup and then the enthusiasm as much of the tournament was played at the Estadio Nacional (again, located in Ñuñoa); Stern argues that the middle-class evolution toward individualism reached a high point at this time. In an epilogue, Stern tries to connect present events in Chile to the history recounted in the book by contending that the embrace of individualism contributed to neoliberalism and an era of consumerism that is now being rejected.The book's strength lies in its eclectic range of sources. Stern supplements standard published sources with others like comics, advertisements, and oral histories to paint a broader portrait of the culture of the time. The book is most effective when it offers a close reading of a particular source—like an episode from the comics or a short story published in a local paper—to illustrate a given middle-class value or a form of middle-class representation. Oral histories are frequently deployed to offer more detail about middle-class practices evident in published sources. For example, she uses oral histories alongside other sources to offer an especially interesting discussion of attitudes toward female appearance and the use of beauty salons as protected feminine spaces.In terms of its general analysis of middle-class culture and identity, the book is most convincing in its early discussions concerning the priority placed on maintaining “decency,” the aspirations of social mobility for the next generation through education, and the disdain expressed by certain segments of the middle class for others—such as the disdain voiced by middle-class entrepreneurs for white-collar government employees. The book is also reasonably convincing in its occasional observations about how state policies for the middle class frequently undercut one another, as when the state tried to push middle-class women to hew to traditional domestic roles in the home while simultaneously recruiting an increasing number of such women to staff government services. At other times, however, the text does not clearly connect evidence to assertion, as, for example, with regard to the larger claims made about the basic features of middle-class character and the trends toward ever-greater individualism.