Locations of Hegemony: The Making of Places in the Toba's Struggle for La Comuna, 1989-99

Abstract

In this article, I examine how hegemonic fields and forms of contention they generate are active forces in production of places. I focus my analysis on an indigenousgroupof Argentinean Chaco, theTobaof Pilcomayo River, and their recent struggles to gain control over municipality of region, locally known as la comuna. I examine how these struggles reproduce and simultaneously contest forms of state hegemony and, in so doing, define contours of la comuna in tension with another place: surrounding bush where Toba focus their hunting and gathering practices. Because of hegemonic values that inform these struggles, I argue that in this process bush is being reconfigured in a contradictory way: on one hand, as a locality gradually undermined by influence of productivist discourses and, on other hand, as a place of autonomy from the government This tense spatial configuration, in turn, informs Toba political discourses and practices. A central point of this article is that hegemony has spatial dimensions that are crucial in unfolding of processes of ideological domination, accommodation, and resistance. {Key words: hegemony, place, ethnic politics, Argentina. Gran Chaco, Toba]