Workers go shopping in Argentina: the rise of popular consumer culture

Abstract

In 1951 an Argentine newspaper announced that standard of living of workers in Argentina was the highest in world. More than half a century later, Argentines still look back to mid-twentieth century as golden years of Peronism, a time when working people, who had struggled to make ends meet a few years earlier, could now buy ready-made clothing, radios, and even big-ticket items like refrigerators. Milanesio explores this period marked by populist politics, industrialisation, and a fairer distribution of national income by analysing relations among consumers, consumer goods, manufacturers, advertising agents, and Juan Domingo Peron's government (1946-1955). Combining theories from anthropology of consumption, cultural studies and gender studies with methodologies of social, cultural and oral histories, Milanesio shows exceptional cultural and social visibility of low-income consumers in postwar Argentina along with their unprecedented economic and political influence. Her study reveals scope of remarkable transformations fuelled by new market by examining language and aesthetics of advertisement, rise of middle- and upper-class anxieties, and profound changes in gender expectations.