Pobreza urbana, comunidad local y Estado-socio en Argentina: La provisión de servicios públicos en un asentamiento de la Región Metropolitana de Buenos Aires

Abstract

While in the better-off sectors of the city public services (such as water, electricity, or waste collection) are provided through State-owned or private companies, in the poorest quarters their provision depends a great deal on community organization as well as on local leadership. Based upon the study of a Metropolitan Buenos Aires shanty town, we contend that both (community organization and local leadership) are two-faced mechanisms. On the one hand, they express the community's efforts to self-manage the satisfaction of basic needs when both private and State companies fail to provide them. On the other, they are the channels through which what we call the “State Partner” secures the regulation of poor populations without getting directly involved in the provision of public services. Thereby, in this type of neighborhoods the day-to-day struggle over the right to the city encounters new forms of State action that are alien to better-off residents and that the notion of partner State helps to grasp.