Identity Investments

This book interprets political dispute and social transformation in contemporary Chile through the lens of the middle classes. Using Pierre Bourdieu's scholarship on distinction, Joel Stillerman proposes the concepts of identity investments and precarious privilege to examine the confluence of subjective expressions and structural realities in different versions of Santiago's middle classes. These different versions, which Stillerman categorizes as “activists,” “moderate Catholics,” “youngsters,” and “pragmatists,” are shaped by practices and ideological beliefs, morals and values, political and social identities, cultural backgrounds, and material conditions, all poignantly configured by their genealogies and intergenerational aspirations. Stillerman focuses on five schools located in two districts of the Chilean capital: Ñuñoa, defined by the author as home to a “traditional, upper-middle class community,” and La Florida, a “mixed-class, suburban community” (p. 16).Methodologically, the innovative book is founded on 68 semistructured interviews with 77 middle-class residents, ages 31 to 59, of the two Santiago districts. In addition to examining photos of interviewees’ living rooms, Stillerman also conducted participant observation both at their homes and at the schools to which they send their children—a Catholic private school, a secular private school, two secular charter schools, and a religious charter school. Through this combination of sources, Stillerman disentangles present-day expressions of the “sense of fragility” that these sectors have experienced historically due to being in the middle (p. 56).In the introduction, Stillerman sets out his taxonomy of Santiago's middle classes via tables explaining each category's education level, age, occupation, and ideological orientation; main identity investments; and “condition of precarious privilege” and “symbolic boundaries with others” (p. 11). A fourth table explains differences in housing, schools, and leisure practices between Ñuñoa and La Florida.Three pairs of chapters each deal with a different kind of identity investment and positioning it locally and globally. Chapters 1 and 2 focus on access to economic capital through employment and place of residence; chapters 3 and 4 deal with schooling as crucial in middle-class identity investments; chapters 5 and 6 examine taste through home decoration, cultural consumption, and leisure activities. Following the conclusion, an appendix details the research design and method.Although highly descriptive, the book is repetitive at times and lacks a deeper discussion of certain elements of Stillerman's taxonomy that may have enabled a more critical reflection on the testimonies collected. A closer look at the generational factor, for example, could have exposed the intricacies of neoliberal development over time. Similarly, Stillerman overlooks how idealistic groups such as moderate Catholics and activists may naturally feel more comfortable within certain social environments, such as at their children's schools, than at their workplaces. At the same time, these two groups set boundaries and class status through endless criticism of each other based on their alleged cultural distinction and an intellectual and value ethos that makes them feel less superficial than their coworkers—a sentiment that is as elitist and exclusionist as the very elites whom they so abhor and criticize. A connection is drawn, however, to the current political context in Chile: the social uprising of October 2019, the writing of a new constitution, and the key role in this all-encompassing process of a student generation born around and following the end of the dictatorship.Since it is their position in the middle that provides the middle classes with their “privilege,” the scope of their precariousness is largely proven by the author over the course of the book. Stillerman demystifies approaches to cultural consumption within these groups—often considered omnivorous—and reveals how, on the contrary, they exercise a wide range of leisure practices with different meanings for each of them, as well as a general lack of budget to attend cultural activities. La Florida's closer proximity to poverty is reflected in insufficient collectivity and group engagement, and Ñuñoa's contrasting educational and cultural offerings expose a different set of priorities, especially for the pragmatists, whose levels of uncertainty are more constant and profound. The differences between the four categories—and their economic strategies of identity investment and symbolic boundary establishment—stand out more than their commonalities. Each category prioritizes differently: for instance, a focus on childhood morality over academic excellence reflects the “concerted cultivation” (p. 85) of moderate Catholic and activist parents, while youngsters tend to strive for results. As for commonalities among the four groups, Stillerman identifies a shared “middle-class aesthetic” and a rejection of social climbers and ostentation.Stillerman's well-documented book addresses the plural and relational nature of the middle classes as an object of study and tackles the pertinence of space as place-meaning-making in the construction of a sense of belonging and social identity. Thus, it constitutes an immense contribution to the current state of the art of contemporary sociological studies of the middle classes in Chile and abroad that also speaks to historical studies of the middle classes

Aesthetics · Art · Icon · Identity (music) · Middle class · Political science · Privilege (computing) · Sociology · Stern · Computer Science · History · Law · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy · Political and Social Dynamics in Chile and Latin America · Politics and Society in Latin America

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