Book Description

This dissertation explores social stratification in Cuba and shows how macro forces affect everyday lives in households in Late-Socialist Havana. At the end of the first decade of the 2000s, state policies began to change rapidly in Cuba. The Guidelines of Economic and Social Policy of the Party and the Revolution, approved in 2011, aimed to widely reform the nation's economic system. This dissertation explores the social and political impacts of these changes in economic policy from the household perspective. As Havana households struggle to "adjust to the adjustments" of the country's economic system, family members experiment with how, and on what terms, they participate in state and emerging sectors of the labor market and make decisions about the future in the face of changing opportunities for mobility brought on by the reforms. In the 1990s, as economic inequalities began to grow in Cuba, as a result of the economic crisis and first wave of economic reforms, a new stratification system divided the population between those with access to hard currency (CUC) and those who did not have access. Today, understanding social stratification in contemporary Havana is more complex. I argue that it is important to consider not only economic differences, but also how distinct configurations of Social, Cultural/Political (Revolutionary Cultural Capital), and Economic capitals differently structure opportunities for mobility, access to consumption, and power. As the economic system changes in Cuba, social and economic capital have become more effective in facilitating access to mobility, consumption, and power in contemporary Havana than Revolutionary Cultural Capital. Finally, I describe how structures of social stratification and mobility in Cuba are changing by exploring how state sector professionals in Havana understand inequalities and the role that different types of capital play in individual and collective processes of social mobility.