Intimate Ironies offers creative meditations on the culture and experiences of “white or light-skinned white-collar salarymen and their families” (p. 45) within the modern market economy that was emerging in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo between 1925 and 1950. The author explores the efforts of urban employees and professionals to “get ahead,” or at least to stay afloat, in a world of threats to the distinctive markers of their status: treacherous competition for jobs, inadequate salaries (especially in government service), multiple part-time jobs (bicos), and a rising cost of living (carestia). These cross-cutting pressures were further intensified after the 1930s, Owensby argues, by political developments that marginalized them from a new populist political game, increasingly defined in terms of “class” and “class conflict” (that is, in terms of workers and industrialists).
The book’s most striking contributions stem from Owensby’s ability to combine penetrating intuition, subtle...
