Consuming Argentina: Jewish and Middle Class Identities in Early Twentieth-Century Buenos Aires

How did the middle class come to help define national identity in Argentina? Using the Jewish middle class as one example of the ethnic middle class, my paper analyzes the markers of middle class identity. Through consumption patterns, I explore the ways in which immigrants became middle class, appropriating the trappings of middle-class life in their new home. How did members of different immigrant groups balance class and ethnic ties? Were the meanings of middle-class status different based on the origin of the person?
     The documentation of consumption – advertisements, lists of goods recovered from thefts by the Buenos Aires police, census lists of imports and exports, as well as the presence of products in literature and film – reveals the increasingly commercialized world in which the Argentine middle class lived. The early twentieth century in Buenos Aires saw the rise of the department store, a thriving economy, a growing entertainment industry, and widespread optimism about the future. The growing middle class, both immigrant and native, was central to all of these processes. Members of the middle class influenced the culture, national identity, and politics of Argentina in the early twentieth century, helping Argentina’s transition to a modern nation. The middle class helped to transform the largely rural country of the nineteenth century into a twentieth century nation based around the cosmopolitan hub of Buenos Aires.
     Jews in the middle class were not exceptional, and used strategies similar to other ethnic members of the groups. They positioned themselves simultaneously within an ethnic group and a class, yet few studies have explored the links between ethnic, class, and national identities. How did identity work for the Jewish middle class on a daily basis, and how did it manifest itself in their product consumption?