Go Shopping in Argentina: The Rise of Popular Consumer Culture by Natalia Milanesio.

• Author: Harris, Cristian A.
• Position: Book review

Milanesio, Natalia. Workers Go Shopping in Argentina: The Rise of Popular Consumer Culture. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2013. xi + 307 pages. Cloth, $55.00.

Workers Go Shopping in Argentina by historian Natalia Milanesio examines the mid-twentieth century transformation of the national market of Argentina as a result of the increased participation of the working population as mass consumers. The book does not focus on "the qualitative or quantitative aspects of working-class consumption" (p. 2), but on "the social and cultural consequences of the emergence of the working-class consumer as a powerful force that transformed modern Argentina" (p 3). The book deals with the work of advertising agencies that targeted the workers, the redefinition of social relations and collective identities (and the fears these changes generated among the upper and middle-classes), and the transformation of the role of the state as a "mediator between business and consumers" (p. 3).

This book forms part of the recent scholarship on the history of popular culture of Peronism and joins such works as historian Eduardo Elena's Dignifying Argentina: Peronism, Citizenship, and Mass Consumption and the volume edited by Matthew B. Karush and Oscar Chamosa, The New Cultural History of Peronism: Power and Identity in Mid-Twentieth-Century Argentina.

Milanesio follows a standard interpretation of Peronism and its place in Argentine historiography, which recognizes Peronism as a critical turning point in the country's history. Before Peron's rise to the presidency, Argentina was a society dominated by a landed oligarchy with close ties to Great Britain, an export-based economy dependent on agricultural commodities (wheat, beef, wool, hides), and an exclusionary political system built on fraudulent elections, corruption, and repression of labor. Peron's presidency (1946-1955) was characterized by nationalist and populist policies, rapid industrialization behind the import-substitution model, incorporation of previously marginalized sectors into a multiclass social movement, and income redistribution policies which in 1954 saw wages as a proportion of the national income reach the highest level ever recorded in the country's history. In not so subtle terms, the author claims that Peronism "unleashed the greatest transformations the country had seen since its independence from Spain" (p. 48). At the same time, however, remarkable continuities are highlighted...