Sales Knowledge, Labor Mobility, and Working-Class Identity Store Clerks (Argentina, 1900?1940)

GRACIELA QUEIROLO

The Middle Classes in Latin America: Subjectivities, Practices, and Genealogies

Routledge

Año: 2022;

Capitalist modernization paved the way for male and female store clerks to join the workforce in Argentinian cities in the late nineteenth century. In contrast to other Latin American historiographies linking store clerks with a middle-class identity, this article contends that they were connected to the working-class. Although sales knowledge and the upward labor mobility that increased salaries for these workers set them apart from other wage earners, the challenging working conditions (notably the psychological hardship and threat of dismissal after many years of service) underlined the vulnerability of these workers and placed them in the working class. Androcentric perspectives also affected their identity as salaried employees, reinforcing the image of the breadwinning male and legitimizing gender inequalities.