Makers of Democracy: A Transnational History of the Middle Classes in Colombia

In Makers of Democracy A. Ricardo L pez-Pedreros traces the ways in which a thriving middle class was understood to be a foundational marker of democracy in Colombia during the second half of the twentieth century. Drawing on a wide array of sources ranging from training manuals and oral histories to school and business archives, L pez-Pedreros shows how the Colombian middle class created a model of democracy based on free-market ideologies, private property rights, material inequality, and an emphasis on a masculine work culture. This model, which naturalized class and gender hierarchies, provided the groundwork for Colombia's later adoption of neoliberalism and inspired the emergence of alternate models of democracy and social hierarchies in the 1960s and 1970s that helped foment political radicalization. By highlighting the contested relationships between class, gender, economics, and politics, L pez-Pedreros theorizes democracy as a historically unstable practice that exacerbated multiple forms of domination, thereby prompting a rethinking of the formation of democracies throughout the Americas.

Author: A. Ricardo López-Pedreros
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 04/26/2019
Pages: 360
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 0.80d
ISBN13: 9781478002857
ISBN10: 1478002859
BISAC Categories:
- History | Latin America | South America
- Social Science | Sociology | Urban

About the Author
A. Ricardo López-Pedreros is Associate Professor of History at Western Washington University and coeditor of The Making of the Middle Class: Toward a Transnational History, also published by Duke University Press.