The State, waiting and political domination among the poor: interview with the sociologist Javier Auyero

Abstract

The extensive work of Javier Auyero regarding the poor in Latin America is disturbing in its sociological and political complexity. Instead of falling into the commonplace explorations of how inhabitants at the margins of our cities live, suffer and relate, his twenty years of research have focused on the consequences of neoliberalism in urban marginality. In light of the publication of his last book Patients of the State (2013), Salud Colectiva invited Auyero to reflect on the connections, not always observed, between waiting and political domination in government offices, schools and hospitals. His ethnographic strategy allows him to enter without prejudices into a social universe marked by polarizing political positions. He affirms that in the everyday encounters of poor people with the diverse forms of state power, practices are reproduced – not all of which are equally conscious and planned – that impart a political education and end up turning those who should be citizens into patients of the State.