This book fills the gap in the literature regarding workers’ consumption and modernization in Argentina. The central thesis establishes that the deepening of workers’ massive consumption was a powerful transforming element in Argentina during the mid-twentieth century. During the first and second presidencies of Juan Domingo Perón, labor families experienced an increase in their ability to access previously inaccessible goods. Peronism is placed under analytical focus in this work, which stands out for its exhaustive analysis of multiple documents in some sort of polyphony of crossed texts, and shows the transformation of social identities under the effects of the expansion of consumption. It is also considered that this process redefined the state's role, turning it into a mediator between businesses and consumers.
Throughout the text, economic and political changes are smartly articulated with audiovisual codes (advertising, for instance) and the improvement of workers’ living conditions during the first Peronist decade. The analysis of the conformation of a consumer's conscience when Perón's government applied policies against speculation is also interesting.
In her final essay, Natalia Milanesio reflects on the Peronist government of Carlos Menem and transformations in Argentine society, neatly observed with the great 2001 crisis. According to the author, La Salada market illustrates social, economic, and cultural changes, but strictly speaking, popular class consumerism had been functioning in the “conurbano” (Buenos Aires’ suburbs) before La Salada appeared. Existence of shopping for poor people as Fery Crazy in the San Martin area together with segmenting characteristics emphasized during the 1990s is an example of persistence. La Salada is the symbolic expression of this kind of consumption and of an industry devastated by national and global economic policies, as well as of the impoverishment of the middle class. La Salada also represents the worst aspects of the employment destruction policies during Menemism.
The book begins with a proper examination of the historical conditions that favored the expansion of consumption. Quality improvements and the recognition of consumers’ rights appear more as government creations than as the result of workers’ demands. It would have been interesting to include Unions’ demands for better salaries, desiring access to both basic necessities and special goods. More privileged working groups had consumer's cooperatives as well. Labor organizations used to pursue raffles with prizes of furniture, cutlery, watches, men's hats, women's purses, and decorative elements. All this proves the preexistence of a demand for consumer goods.
The exploration of literature is exhaustive and her analysis of documentary materials is convincing. However, she doesn't discuss Rocchi's idea that the development of the consumerist society in Argentina took place between the 1920s and the arrival of Peronism. Other works show that the methods used to appeal to popular consumption make this problematic. For example, research on publications with wide circulation throughout the country and abroad pointed out childhood consumption. In addition, advertisements of food products or articles such as gramophones show people modestly dressed, suggesting that consumers of this product were broader than the elite and publishers had popular classes in mind.
Perón's government constituted a key moment in the redistribution of income. Analyzing advertising campaigns and testimonies from people who lived in Buenos Aires or Santa Fe constitutes an attractive way of avoiding the difficulty of collecting supporting statistical information. This decision allows the author to establish a stimulating interdisciplinary dialogue. She combines consumer anthropology theory and gender studies with oral history methodology. In this way, Milanesio builds up her object of study: working-class consumers with gender and generational differences.
Milanesio's interviewees emphasize the importance of prosperity experienced by workers in the 1950s: better salaries and access to credit, the possibility of admiring and visiting new big stores, observing merchandise presented in shop windows, or simply walking through more elegant streets. The author works with extended memories of happiness that Peronism might have left for workers, and she does so in the context of the economic crisis of 2001, which deeply affected the lives of the majority of Argentine people. Milanesio's testimonies are selected from the richest areas of Argentina, which leaves some questions open: What did workers from poorer provinces think of consumerism? What was the encounter like between goods and subjects in Santiago del Estero, Corrientes, or Catamarca? In the complex analysis presented by this book, how is it possible to prompt an intervention in a more heterogeneous Argentina?
Workers Go Shopping in Argentina allows analysis of Peronism from another perspective. The workers’ perspective not only backed Perón and his industrial growth plans, but they also entered the consumers’ world within the frame of a more extended process consisting of the expansion of access to public spaces for other social classes. In addition, this process significantly modified gender roles, but it did not break the domestic ideal that Peronist practices and language reasserted. This book opens a path to think about the working class's consumption under Peronism, and there resides its novelty. For the last three decades, many historians have been working in Argentina on diverse dimensions of workers’ welfare, living conditions, gender representations, and cultural expressions. In many of those works, consumption appears as background; Milanesio's research places it front and center.
