AUYERO, JAVIER: Patients of the State: The Politics of Waiting in Argentina. Durham: Duke University Press, 2012.

Abstract

What are we doing, and what is being done to us, when we wait? In this most recent book, Javier Auyero turns his focus on this often invisible feature of social life – the act of waiting. Rather than viewing time spent waiting as empty or as a mere place marker before purposeful action occurs, Auyero directs our attention to the act of waiting itself and the ways in which being made to wait is already productive of social meaning. The book proposes and serves as a “tempography,” tracing how the urban poor of Buenos Aires perceive and experience time spent waiting. Being made to wait, coupled with a lack of consistency and transparency as to the reasons for the delay or expected duration of the wait, operates, Auyero argues, as a means of political domination and subordination to the state.