Money, emotions and domestic service in Buenos Aires, 1950–70

Abstract

Household workers and their employers share a complex bond, one that implies physical and emotional proximity, but also intense asymmetries and inequalities. In mid-twentieth century Buenos Aires, employers often characterized the workers employed at their homes as part of their family, although that discourse did not imply equality, and was rather used to demand them loyalty beyond the limits of a working contract. Although domestic service went through a process of commodification in the first decades of the twentieth century, the precise nature of its internal dynamics remained undefined, half-way between the world of the family, and its domestic hierarchies based on status, and that of (commoditized) labor and class. The distinction between work and family is rooted in the separation of love and money. However, as Viviana Zelizer (2009) has shown, not only modern family relations are based in the exchange of money and goods, but also many times the legitimacy of that exchange derives from how the people involved are characterized as family; furthermore, the exchange of money and goods are sometimes used as a language of love. Within domestic service, money could have different meanings, transcending its exchange value and conveying a variety of emotions, such as love and gratitude, but also anger and resentment. These meanings and the ways in which money circulated between employers and workers could define the type of relation they had and what each one could expect from it. Based on the analysis of different historical sources -including institutional and judicial records, as well as oral interviews- this text will examine what feelings household workers and their employers imposed on money within domestic service relations in the city and province of Buenos Aires between the 1950s and the 1970s.