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The article discusses the concept of social reproduction in Mexico City, Mexico as it applies to the presence of child laborers in that city, focusing on how essential this labor was to family cohesion and stability. The author is more broadly concerned with the ways child labor helped families construct a working class identity. Connections between children's work, domestic (or reproductive) labor, and conceptualizations of family are drawn by the author. To this extent, the author analyzes the role of wages in perpetuating familial reciprocity among the working class. A brief analysis of Mexico's anti-child labor laws is provided.

The article analyzes two public dining halls in Mexico City in the 1940s and 1950s and examines how the middle-class reformers and working-class comensales negotiated modernity and how food practices transformed class identity and gender in the city. Public dining halls were established by the Ministry of Public Health and Assistance as a way to transform the eating habits of the working class. There were strategies to attract diners, such as radio spots, fliers, door to door invitations and the support of the Catholic Church. Rules enforced by state employees and social workers had to be followed. Manners, such as using cutlery instead of using tortillas to scoop up food and eating international cuisine, had to be learned by the diners.

The article focuses on the comparative frame in subaltern studies. It examines the spontaneity in the context of the South Asian Subaltern Studies Group, Gramsci, and the Zapatista project in Chiapas, Mexico. It elaborates a critique of the comparative frame in subaltern studies and proposes a form of conducting subaltern studies which avoids teleological subordination and subsumption of political expressions and movements.