Along the Bolivian highway : social mobility and political culture in a new middle class / Miriam Shakow.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Shakow, Miriam.

Series:

Contemporary ethnography

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Group identity.

Middle class--Political activity.

Political culture.

Sacaba (Bolivia)--Politics and government.

Sacaba (Bolivia).

Political culture--Bolivia--Sacaba.

Middle class--Political activity--Bolivia--Sacaba.

Middle class.

Group identity--Bolivia--Sacaba.

Bolivia--Sacaba.

Physical Description:

259 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2014]

Summary:

"Along the Bolivian Highway traces the emergence of a new middle class in Bolivia, a society commonly portrayed as the site of struggle between a superwealthy white minority and a destitute indigenous majority. Miriam Shakow shows how Bolivian middle classes have deeply shaped politics and social life. While national political leaders like Evo Morales have proclaimed a new era of indigenous power and state-led capitalism in place of racial exclusion and neoliberal free trade, Bolivians of indigenous descent who aspire to upward mobility have debated whether to try to rise within their country's longstanding hierarchies of race and class or to break down those hierarchies. The ascent of indigenous politics, and a boom in coca and cocaine production beginning in the 1970s, have created dilemmas for 'middling' Bolivians who do not fit the prevailing social binaries of white elite and indigenous poor. In their family relationships, political activism, and community life, the new middle class confronted competing moral imperatives. Focusing on social and political struggles that hinged on class and racial status in a provincial boomtown in central Bolivia, Shakow recounts the experiences of first-generation teachers, agronomists, lawyers, and prosperous merchants. ... By linking the intimate politics within families to regional and national power struggles, Along the Bolivian Highway sheds light on what it means to be middle class in the global south."--Publisher description.

Contents:

The formation of a new middle class

The intimate politics of new middle classes in Sacaba

Middling Sacabans respond to Evo and MAS

Condemning clientelism

Laments of betrayal

Middle classes and debates over the definition of community.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780812246148

0812246144

OCLC:

860943814