CONSUMING CLASS: Multilevel Marketers in Neoliberal Mexico
Since the 1980s, Mexican leaders have followed other Latin American countries in pursuing neoliberal economic policies designed to stimulate foreign investment, reduce public spending, and promote free trade. Recent studies of indigenous movements and popular protests challenge the idea that these market-based economic reforms enjoy a broad consensus and suggest that elites impose them by force. By turning the focus to middle-class Mexicans, I argue that some nonelite sectors of society avidly welcome the reign of the free market. Although they do not profit directly from unregulated capitalism, the middle class looks to neoliberalism to ensure access to the material markers of class status. The rising popularity of multilevel marketing companies in Mexico, which glorify consumption and celebrate the possibilities of entrepreneurship, demonstrates the appeal of neoliberalism to citizens fearful of diminished purchasing power. By tying consumption to globalized free markets, neoliberalism does not need coercion to win acceptance.
Building down and dreaming up
Scholars and journalists have heralded the spread of direct sellers like Avon and Amway in the developing world as providing a training ground for capitalist entrepreneurs. By examining ethnographic evidence from Omnilife, a Mexican producer of nutritional supplements, I argue that person-to-person marketing is not a rationalist response to neoliberal economic reforms but, rather, a spiritual one. Quasi-religious organizations like Omnilife promise workers a renewed self-image that restores the balance between individual interests and obligations to others that has been disrupted by neoliberal economic reforms. In pursuing this total transformation, workers accept mechanisms of control that mask the company's overriding profit motive.
The Diminishing Role of Social Work Administrators in Social Service Agencies
ABSTRACT The social service industry in the United States has experienced tremendous growth and change since the early 1970s. Unfortunately, the social work profession has not kept up with this growth and change. This article explores several issues that have emerged in social work administration that may contribute to the seemingly diminished role of social workers in administrative positions in social service agencies. They include the role that schools of social work play in educating social workers for administration, competition for administrative positions in social service agencies, and the differences which exist between administration in social service agencies and other types of organizations.