Crisis, language of sacrifice and the narrative of origin of the middle class in Argentina

VISACOVSKY, SERGIO EDUARDO

Nueva York

Congreso; Latin American Studies Association (LASA); 2016

Latin American Studies Association (LASA)

Although Argentine crisis of 20012 was an unprecedented situation which demanded particular responses and interpretations, these could only be generated by means of existing cultural resources. Indeed, the specific conditions that led to the crisis enabled the middle class stories about nation to be made explicit or revealed. I argue that the crisis favored the public circulation of the middle class story and the role of work, effort and sacrifice in social mobility. As we shall see, the middle class story is, at the same time, a way of narrating the national history. In other words, the crisis exposed how a part of Argentine people perceived Argentina. Many segments of the Argentine society accepted a set of beliefs about why some people had progressed and others were standstill as a truth; how progress could be achieved; how progress could be made decently, who were eligible to progress and who would never progress. In this discourse ?work?, ?effort? and ?sacrifice? play a really special position. This can be considered a small matter, since many people were unemployed or in danger of losing their jobs during the 1990s and the beginning of the 21st century. At a time when unemployment grew as never before, a moment when job loss was a latent and quotidian threat, people not only aspired to retain or recover their job. While hard work and efforts were considered necessary conditions for progress, not all hard work and efforts were suitable. Thus, crisis was a time when many people retested their beliefs such as: not all manners of work driving to progress and not all modes can be considered an acceptable progress.Based on multi-sited fieldwork conducted in 2004-2006 with the so-called "middle class? individuals and organizations affected by crisis, it will be shown here that the widespread impoverishment and unemployment did not destroy the middle class as a cultural project, but this was the space through which national history could be conceived and evaluated as a destiny that has not been reached yet, as a dilemma whose solution is pending.