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Dr. Parker is a social and socio-legal historian of urban South America, best known for his research on the middle class. His most recent book, on the duel in Uruguay, shows how dueling codes and the protocol of honour created a parallel legal system that shaped the norms of nineteenth- and twentieth-century journalism and politics. He has also published articles and book chapters on public health, housing, and labour. His current SSHRC-funded research examines how South Americans conceptualized their urban social problems in the mirror of global comparison.
Selected Publications
Latin America's Middle Class: Unsettled Debates and New Histories
Lexington Books (Rowman and Littlefield)
2012
The Idea of the Middle Class: White-Collar Workers and Peruvian Society, 1900-1950
Penn State University Press
1998
Chapters in Books
- "Taxonomy, Identity, Mode of Being, or Political Project? Epistemologies of 'Middle Class' in Latin America since 1948." In Mario Barbosa Cruz, A. Ricardo López-Pedreros and Claudia Stern, editors, Middle Classes in Latin America: Subjectivities, Practices, and Genealogies. New York and London: Routledge, 2022: 384-404.
- Spanish translation in Clases medias en América Latina II: Guerra fria, neoliberalismo y movilizaciones sociales. Bogotá/México: Universidad del Rosario/UAM Cuajimalpa, 2023 (ISBN 978-958-500-095-7): 331-370.
- "An Introduction to José Carlos Mariátegui's 'The Anti-Imperialist Perspective' (1928)." In Aesthetics and Politics in the Global South. Ed. J. Daniel Elam. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. Bloomsbury Philosophy Library. Web. 26 Apr. 2023. <DOI 10.5040/9781350302587>
- “Asymmetric Globality and South American Narratives of Bourgeois Failure.” In Christof Dejung, David Motadel, and Jürgen Osterhammel, eds., The Global Bourgeoisie: The Rise of the Middle Classes in the Age of Empire. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019: 275-294.
- “Siúticos, Huachafos, Cursis, Arribistas and Gente de Medio Pelo: Social Climbers and the Representation of Class in Chile and Peru, 1860-1930.” In A. Ricardo López and Barbara Weinstein, eds., The Making of the Middle Class: Toward a Transnational History. Durham: Duke University Press, 2012: 335-354.
- "Gentlemanly Responsibility and Insults of a Woman: Dueling and the Unwritten Rules of Public Life in Uruguay, 1860-1920." In Katherine Bliss and William French, eds., Gender, Sexuality, and Power in Latin America Since Independence. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007: 109-132.
- "Civilizing the City of Kings: Hygiene and Housing in Lima." In Ronn F. Pineo and James A. Baer, eds., Cities of Hope: People, Protests, and Progress in Urbanizing Latin America, 1870-1930. Boulder, Westview Press, 1998: 153-178.
- "Los pobres de la clase media: estilo de vida, consumo, e identidad en una ciudad tradicional." In Aldo Panfichi H. and Felipe Portocarrero S., eds., Mundos interiores: Lima 1850-1950. Lima: Universidad del Pacífico, 1995: 161-185.
Journal Articles
- “Honor Ideology, Dueling Culture, and Judicial Lies in 1920s Uruguay,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History, August 2016.
- “The All-Meaning Middle and the Alchemy of Class,” EIAL: Estudios Interdiscipinarios de América Latina y el Caribe 25:2 (Dec. 2014): 9-29.
- "Middle-Class Mobilization and the Language of Orders in Urban Latin America: From Caste to Category in Early Twentieth-Century Lima," Journal of Urban History 31:3 (March 2005): 367-381.
- "Law, Honor, and Impunity in Spanish America: The Debate over Dueling, 1870-1920." Law and History Review 19:2 (Summer 2001): 311-341.
- "Discursos, identidades, y la invención histórica de la clase media peruana," Debates en Sociología 22 (1997): 99-112. DOI:
- "Peruvian Politics and the Eight-Hour Day: Rethinking the 1919 General Strike." Canadian Journal of History/Annales canadiennes d’histoire 30: 3 (Dec. 1995): 417-438.
- "White-Collar Lima, 1910-1929: Commercial Employees and the Rise of the Peruvian Middle Class." Hispanic American Historical Review 72:1 (Feb. 1992): 47-72.
Media
- "The Duel of Law," History Today, Volume 74 issue 11 (November 2024), 28-39.
- "Why Dueling was legal in Uruguay from 1920 to 1992," talk at Concordia University, March 10, 2023,
- "Studying the Middle Class in Lima as the Wall Fell in Berlin: A Historian's Mini-Memoir." In ReVista: the Harvard Review of Latin America.
Awards and recognition
- History Department Teaching Award, ֱ, 2019.
- Principal's Teaching Award for Promoting Student Inquiry, ֱ, 2018.
- James A. Robertson Prize for the article "White-Collar Lima," Conference on Latin American History.
Graduate supervision
Urban South America (especially Peru, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay) in the 19th and 20th Centuries
