Upper Middle Class Social Reproduction

157 Pages·2019·3.094 MB·English

by  María Luisa Méndez, Modesto Gayo

UPPER MIDDLE
CLASS SOCIAL
REPRODUCTION
Wealth, Schooling, and
Residential Choice in Chile
María Luisa Méndez
and Modesto Gayo
Upper Middle Class Social Reproduction
María Luisa Méndez • Modesto Gayo
Upper Middle Class
Social Reproduction
Wealth, Schooling, and Residential Choice in Chile
María Luisa Méndez Modesto Gayo
Diego Portales University Diego Portales University
Santiago, Chile Santiago, Chile
ISBN 978-3-319-89694-6 ISBN 978-3-319-89695-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89695-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018942894
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To our parents: Ana Luisa and Tito; María Luz and Modesto.
A
cknowledgments
This book is the result of a long process of dialogue and exchange of
feelings, ideas, and experiences. Although the particular project behind
this piece of work began in 2014, our shared interest in the underlying
issues dates back 15 years, to when we met at the University of Manchester,
UK, where we were both graduate students. We both came from a back-
ground of the study of the middle class: in Maria Luisa’s case, an interest
in recent identity construction in neoliberal Chile, and in Modesto’s case,
a concern with middle class politics in Spain between the 1980s and 2000s.
British sociology has been a strong formative influence on both of us
through to the present day, as has the work of French sociologist Pierre
Bourdieu on the study of class (cultural class analysis). In this book, we
have attempted to combine our original interest in the sociology of social
stratification, with elements drawn from the sociology of culture, cultural
sociology, and political sociology. One transversal and key feature has been
the quite evident influence of methodological reflections drawn from this
long empirical tradition, without which what we offer in this work would
have been impossible.
We became indebted to so many people over the course of writing this
book that it is only possible to mention a few of them—the most indis-
pensable ones—here. Professor Mike Savage is perhaps the person to
whom we find ourselves most eternally grateful, and forever indebted, not
only for the personal support he gave to us at difficult moments, but also
for having been prepared to take risks on our behalf. He agreed to super-
vise Maria Luisa’s doctoral thesis, and also opened up a space for Modesto,
on the Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion research project, which was
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
key to Modesto’s professional and intellectual development. Professor
Savage has been a constant inspiration to us to continue improving, and
push back the boundaries in our area of research.
Maria Luisa would like to thank colleagues from around the world with
whom she has been able to discuss and exchange ideas over a decade of
study of the middle class and from whom she has learned an enormous
amount. They include Emmanuelle Barozet, Vicente Espinoza, Virginia
Guzmán, Michaela Benson, Sonia Bookman, María José Álvarez, Omar
Pereyra, Gabriel Otero, Rolando Franco, Martín Hopenhayn, Tomás
Ariztía, and Vania Perret. She would particularly like to thank Cath Collins
for her terrific and thorough language editing work and Paulina Valenzuela
for her tremendous contribution in the field, negotiating access that
enabled us to carry out the interviews with upper middle class families in
Santiago that have been absolutely fundamental to the book. On a more
personal note, she would like to thank her parents for their unfailing sup-
port, both back when she was a sociology student and today when, as an
academic, she still sometimes bites off more than she can chew.
Modesto would like to thank Prof. Alan Warde for all the work we
developed together. Modesto learnt so much, not only intellectually, but
also in developing a personal attitude to academia work that makes col-
laboration with other scholars something to positively look forward to. He
would also like to thank Prof. Tony Bennet, not only for their working
collaboration during his time in Manchester, but also for all the time and
energy they have invested over the past four years in the Australian Cultural
Fields project, another round of the cultural capital puzzle. To his intelli-
gence and kindness, he owes more than ideas. The methodological part of
the book has a lot to do with these above mentioned scholars, as they
decided to open their research agendas to the use of techniques from the
factor analysis family. However, it is also necessary to acknowledge how
much we learnt from Brigitte Le Roux and Henry Rouanet. Through a
series of meetings and discussions that took place around 2005, Modesto
acquired key concepts, tools, and strategies equipping him to use multiple
correspondence analysis to sufficient depth. Modesto is still using it very
extensively, and this book is in part a homage to that learning, and particu-
larly to Henry Rouanet, who passed away several years ago. We attempted
to push this methodological agenda forward somewhat through system-
atic and multistage analysis sequencing, assuming, and hopefully demon-
strating, that what was good for a single analysis could also be good for
analyses performed several times and in different ways.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT S ix
Modesto’s family has always supported him, whether or not they under-
stood what it was about. By ‘family’ he means his parents, Mariluz and
Modesto, his sisters, Flor, Begoña, Yolanda and his brother Álvaro.
Finally, this book was completed during the most idyllic holiday spent
between Wallmapu and the infinite spaces of the Atacama Desert. Our
beloved daughters, Pilar and Carmen, accompanied us on this great adven-
ture, at the same time as they understood our need to finish writing this
book, a story in many ways inspired by the contradictions, uncertainties,
and dreams that bringing up children involves.
Institutionally, we would like to thank the Chilean state funding agency,
the National Committee for Research on Science and Technology
(CONICYT), for support in the form of the FONDECYT Regular project
no. 1140136 and via the Center for Social and Cohesion Studies, COES
(CONICYT/FONDAP/15130009).
c
ontents
1 I ntroduction 1
2 S ocial Mobility over Time and in Space: Ascending
Residential and Social Trajectories 29
3 C ommon Ground: On the Centrality of Residential
and School Choice 55
4 F rantic Lives and Practices of Socio-Cultural
Differentiation 83
5 N either Conservatives nor Progressives: Fragmentation
in the Cultural Repertoires of the Upper Middle Class 109
6 I nheritors, Achievers, and Incomers: Wrapping
Up a Multidimensional Approach to Social Reproduction 135
Index 147
xi
l f
ist of igures
Fig. 1.1 US$ household income in Chile: top 2%. Source: authors’ own
construction, based on data from CASEN survey 2015 16
Fig. 2.1 Socioeconomic segregation in the Santiago Metropolitan Area.
Source: Center for Territorial Intelligence, CIT (www.cit.cl) 32
Fig. 2.2 Longitudinal analysis of upper middle class housing in Santiago 33
Fig. 2.3 Longitudinal analysis of building permits for upper middle class
housing (2002–2012) 34
Fig. 2.4 Locations of 50 best schools and building permits in Santiago
de Chile 35
Fig. 2.5 Percentages of spatial mobility by average commune income in
the upper middle class area and Metropolitan Region 37
Fig. 2.6 Subjective social position of father, interviewee and oldest child
(son or daughter) in the high income cone (left) and the
Metropolitan Region (right) 41
Fig. 2.7 Differences in subjective position between upper middle class
and Metropolitan Region fathers (left) and children (right) 43
Fig. 2.8 MCA spatial and social mobilities 48
Fig. 3.1 First choice: house, school, or neither 60
Fig. 3.2 Expectations of residential area lived in 62
Fig. 3.3 Relevant items for improving social position: responses
“important” and “very important” 67
Fig. 3.4 Expectations regarding school choice 68
Fig. 3.5 Correspondence analysis (CA) of residential and school clusters 74
Fig. 3.6 CA of residential/school expectation clusters and spatial/social
mobility patterns 76
Fig. 4.1 Parents’ participation in school activities (% of parents who
participated always/most of the time) 86
xiii