Contemporary Argentina Research Articles

From Civilization to Barbarism in El ciudadano ilustre : The Return of a Latin American Paradigm?

The aim of this article is to have an in-depth look at how the nineteenth-century paradigm of civilización y barbarie , predominant in Latin America, is represented in the film El ciudadano ilustre/ The Distinguished Citizen (2016), an Argentine film directed by Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat. A fictional account of an Argentine writer’s life after winning the Nobel Prize, it has a highly ambiguous ending. I argue that the film establishes a dialogic link with classics of Latin American literature such as Esteban Echeverría’s ‘El Matadero’ (1871) and Jorge Luis Borges’ ‘El Sur’ (1953), and Facundo by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, laying bare the unresolved tension between civilización and barbarie in contemporary Argentina and broader Latin American society. A close analysis of El ciudadano ilustre shows that, at least in Latin America, oppositional concepts have all but died, thus challenging the postmodern trend of dissolving them along with other supposedly outdated binarisms (such as urban v. rural, centre v. periphery.). Simultaneously, the film uses metafiction as a postmodern strategy to deal critically with the dichotomy.

The promise of interspecies desegregation: Allying with capybaras against gated communities in Buenos Aires’ wetlands

Nordelta is an exclusive gated community in Buenos Aires built over the wetlands of the Paraná Delta that has encroached on more-than-human bodies and lands through racialized discourses and infrastructures. In this article, I analyze a controversy that arose in 2021 when crowds of capybaras started roaming freely in the community. The event triggered a robust social media response that, I argue, generated popular epistemic tools to enlist capybaras into categories of multispecies endangerment and dispossession. In addition, I delve into the emergence of the communitarian territory of Punta Querandí, which, at the borders of Nordelta, seeks to repair segregation and encroachment for humans and other-than-humans. Drawing on scholarship on animals, race, and the built environment, I employ an ethnographically informed analysis of social media, archival documents, and interviews to explore the two cases as responses to racial capitalism and real extractivism in contemporary Argentina, shedding light into what I term “the promise of interspecies desegregation.”

Beyond Religious Affiliations: Profiles of Religiosity and Institutional Belonging in Contemporary Argentina

Beyond Religious Affiliations: Profiles of Religiosity and Institutional Belonging in Contemporary Argentina

Lessons Learned from Argentina's Struggles for Legal Abortion

This essay argues that abortion, as a practice and a political cause, challenges traditional and hegemonic health frameworks and contributes to the development of a feminist approach to health. The essay focuses on experiences and activism for legal abortion in contemporary Argentina, drawing some examples from other contexts. First, it argues that abortion reveals the extent to which health and sickness are entangled with symbolic and localized processes, including marked stigma, which influence the lived experience of health care. The essay analyzes how feminist activism in Argentina gradually changed these processes. Second, it contends that abortion as a health practice contributes to the deconstruction of traditional dichotomies between prevention and intervention and health and sickness, as well as to modifying hierarchical decision-making mechanisms. In the Argentine case, ensuring abortion access in public health institutions, with the help of activist professionals, allowed for the broadening of biomedical frameworks and a move toward more holistic approaches. Third, the essay analyzes how increasing access to medication abortion challenged monopolistic and exclusionary processes in the production and institutionalization of legitimate knowledge about health.

Аграрное развитие Аргентины во второй половине XIX – начале ХХ вв.

The work is devoted to the final stage in the formation of agrarian regime in Argentina. The foundation for contempo-rary Argentina was built at that time On the Argentina pampas a significant change took place. A land that had produced cat-tle useful only for hides, tallow and salted beef was trans-formed into cultivated fields and pastures where fences closed stock into alfalfa pastures. The rise of the farming and sheep ranching accompanied this shift in the cattle economy. Frigorificos – plants for production of chilled beef made it possible to be sold in markets of Great Britain. Argentina be-came one of the world’s leading exporters of wheat, corn, beef mutton and wool. It indicates that behind this economic accomplishment lies land structure – the predominance of large ownership – latifundia. Argentina had no homestead act or other long-seal land distribution plan that wood root immi-grants to the nation by granting them ownership of the soil. The Argentina landed elites owned most of the good land with the result that immigrants became tenants on short term leases. The farming developed primary as servant to the predom-inant sheep and cattle interests. The result was a pampa without settler filled with migrant tenant farmers a land exploited but not possessed. The predominance of latifundia and the land tenant system retarded the intensification of agrarian sector: Argentina failed to build a modern agrarian economy.

Witold Gombrowicz we współczesnej Argentynie: ślady, artefakty, afekty

The article describes the transcultural aspects and affective ways of perceiving the work of Witold Gombrowicz in contemporary Argentina. Source documents (such as the residence card documenting the writer’s arrival to Argentina) as well as pop- -cultural images of the writer in Argentinian culture, visual field, and urban space are investigated. According to Wolfgang Welsch, Gombrowicz’s transculturality is founded on placing himself between Polish and Argentinian cultures, based on “artifacts of memory.”

'Sing me a lullaby': Tenderness and Trans Mothers in the Work of Camila Sosa Villada

ABSTRACT: This article examines Camila Sosa Villada's book Las malas (2019), a tale of trans or travesti sex workers in Córdoba, Argentina. Sosa is perhaps the most recognized trans writer in Argentina, and a notable feature of her writing is its portrayal of trans maternity. This essay addresses the depiction of tenderness in Sosa's work in the context of questions about motherhood and trans rights in contemporary Argentina. The formal and technical choices made in her work offer insights into the political potential of creative writing to destabilize literary genres while engaging in pressing debates about gender and human rights.

Origins and Popularization of Traditional Chinese Therapies in Argentina at the End of 20th Century: the Case of Daniel Alegre

Various resources of the so-called traditional Chinese medicine, such as taijiquan, massage, diets, or acupuncture, have become widely available in the everyday therapeutic culture of contemporary Argentina. While these resources can be found in the first half of the 20th century, it is evident that from the 1960s onward their presence is more evident, with a strong emphasis from the 1980s on. This article aims to describe the reception and popularization of body and therapeutic techniques of traditional Chinese medicine in Argentina in the 1980s through the case of Daniel Alegre, a key figure in the dissemination of Chinese therapeutic techniques. To do so, it focuses on certain key mediators in the popularization of techniques such as taijiquan and Chinese massage: teachers, promoters, and specialized magazines. All these mediators are key artifacts in the processes of massification and dissemination of traditional Chinese medicine in a broader emerging horizon associated with two simultaneous processes, the Chinese cultural transnationalization and the boom of new forms of holistic management of personal well-being.

Coping with inflation: Social perceptions and ordinary measures of price increases in contemporary Argentina

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, in a significant part of the world, the cost of living has once again become a central issue in the agenda of both governments and populations. However, in some countries, inflation has been a distinctive feature of the economy for more than a decade, which the pandemic has only exacerbated. Argentina is one of these countries. Based on a 4-year qualitative investigation carried out among low- and middle-income households in a mid-sized city in Buenos Aires province and complemented by observations made among senior households in the same province during the pandemic, this article seeks two purposes: on one hand, to analyze how price rise appears in people’s concerns when we focus on domestic economies and, on the other, to account for the ways of measuring inflation and evaluating its impacts on such economies. The document intends to contribute to the construction of a perspective on inflation that is attentive to how people act and think about the economy in their everyday lives.

Resenha do livro: Familias e infancias en la historia contemporánea: Jerarquías de clase, género y edad en Argentina [Famílias e infâncias na história contemporânea: hierarquias de classe, gênero e idade na Argentina], de Isabella Cosse (ed.)

Research on childhood, adolescence, and family in Latin America has a longstanding tradition and, at the same time, an arduous task that lies ahead. The book under review is the result of a collaborative project that studies 20th-century social hierarchies in Argentina from the perspective of childhood and the family. Its authors are researchers with a solid background in history. These researchers conduct their work within the framework of the Historical Research Group on Families and Childhood in Contemporary Argentina, based at the Interdisciplinary Institute of Gender Studies within the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the University of Buenos Aires.

The place of peronism in the history of science in Argentina

This research is part of a larger study aimed at reconstructing the various ways in which professional historiography and other non-academic historical discourses have dealt with the relationship between Science and Peronism in contemporary Argentina. The purpose of this study is to analyze the overly simplistic image of this relationship that still persists in social memory and, to a large extent, continues to influence historical research agendas and the more general political debate. The article provides a bibliographic review and offers a reading key, useful for future research agendas, in which the history of science and that of Peronism intersects, coming from both professional historiography and of the disciplinary histories many times rehearsed by the scientific community itself. These investigations cover a multitude of topics, but for reasons of space and focus, we will focus here mainly on those disciplines that, broadly speaking, we could encompass within the “exact and natural sciences” and engineering. Based on these considerations, it is possible to observe that this field of study still reproduces a set of stereotypes that limit historical knowledge about the period, both with regard to the insertion of Peronism in a long-term reading of state policies in science and technology, as in its insertion in the history of the university in Argentina.

The reversal of populism. Assessing the explanatory power of the ideational approach in contemporary Argentina

In this study we conduct a least-likely case study in order to assess the analytical power of the ideational approach to populism. We do so by testing the direct and conditional effects of populist attitudes on vote choices in Argentina. We examine whether populist attitudes are associated with the Peronist vote, as more essentialist interpretations would lead us to expect, or, on the contrary, linked to vote for right parties, an expectation that is more consistent with thin-ideological approaches. Our data consists of an original online survey carried out in September 2020, a specific juncture at which the Peronist government had to deal with widespread popular discontent caused by intense economic crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings reveal that populist attitudes are positively associated with voting for right parties and that the effects of such attitudes are conditioned by ideological preferences. These results underscore the explanatory power of ideational approaches to the electoral activation of populist attitudes.

Run and travel. The passion for 'running' and tourism in contemporary Argentina

Run and travel. The passion for 'running' and tourism in contemporary Argentina

Run and travel. The passion for 'running' and tourism in contemporary Argentina

The activity of running, as it is usually called by its enthusiastic and highly-engaged practitioners, constitutes not only a sport but also a lifestyle that is characterised by the adoption of a broad set of ethical and aesthetic precepts that transcend mere physical exercise. In Argentina, it entails a wide variety of experiences that, for certain types of 'serious' runners, serve to define such a lifestyle. In this paper it will be shown how trips are precisely one of those defining experiences, and how such trips demand an intense tourist planning to runners and their eventual companions.

“There are traitors among us”: On the Emotional Vicissitudes of Populist Politics

AbstractThis article examines fellowship and accusations of betrayal among members of a populist movement in contemporary Argentina. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted among self‐described “militants” of the Kirchnerist movement, a contemporary iteration of Peronism, this work makes a uniquely anthropological intervention into existing literature on populist politics, which tends to focus on populism’s demonization of the enemy of “the people.” In contrast, this article argues that a focus on the demonization of an external enemy misses essential dimensions of the social world of Peronist politics, which is primarily characterized by loving bonds of fellowship between Peronist militants. I show how, in moments of uncertainty, this emphasis on fellowship morphs into a preoccupation with treachery, such that concern with the potential insubordination of one’s fellow Peronists eclipses animus towards external enemies. This article argues for greater attention to the lived experiences of adherents to populist movements to encourage a more holistic and nuanced understanding of the social world of populist politics.

¿Quién tiene derecho a recordar? Las disputas por la memoria durante los gobiernos kirchneristas (Argentina, 2003-2015)

El artículo se propone abordar las principales disputas que tuvieron lugar en Argentina frente al involucramiento del Estado en la formulación de “políticas de memoria” durante los gobiernos de Néstor Kirchner y Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2003-2015). Para ello, nos detendremos en las discusiones que tuvieron lugar en el Congreso Nacional en ocasión de la construcción de un Museo en el ex Centro Clandestino de Detención ESMA. Analizaremos las principales críticas formuladas por la oposición partidaria en clave de “ilegitimidad”, “apropiación” y “banalización” de la memoria. La reconstrucción de estos argumentos y las respuestas esgrimidas por el oficialismo nos permitirán dar cuenta de los términos en que se desarrolló la disputa política por el pasado e introducir algunas consideraciones en torno del papel otorgado al “consenso” como modo de legitimación de la acción estatal en la materia.¿Who is entitled to remember? Memory conflicts during Kirchner and Fernández de Kirchner’s administrations in Argentina (2003-2015).The articleanalyses the main memory conflicts that took place in Argentina vis- à-vis the State involvement in memory politics during Néstor Kirchner and Fernández de Kirchner’s administrations (2003-2015). To this effect, it examines some of the debates held in the national parliament concerning the construction of a museum at the ex- clandestine detention center ESMA. It goes over the main critiques made by the political opposition (expressed in terms of “illegitimacy”, “appropriation” and “trivialization of memories”) and the responses held by the government. Altogether, this analysis will show the way in which the political arena dealt with the past in contemporary Argentina and will allow us to introduce some consideration Key words: Memory politics, Kirchnerism, State, ESMA

Salud en la prensa contemporánea

El artículo propone una categorización de las noticias de salud en la prensa gráfica argentina contemporánea. Asimismo, desde la perspectiva de análisis del discurso, se presentan una serie de resultados de investigación que dan cuenta que la salud, en tanto eje temático y conceptual, aparece de forma difusa, amplia y extendida en diferentes artículos y notas, como un valor social transversal que incluye dimensiones que van desde lo político, lo económico, lo artístico y deportivo, hasta la vida cotidiana y los estilos de consumo. Como cierre, se relaciona esta transversalidad de la noción de salud, con la idea de medicalización de la vida.

Correr, sufrir, disfrutar. El cuerpo como instrumento de investigación

El running constituye un estilo de vida de notoria masividad en la Argentina contemporánea que excede la decisión puntual de salir a correr con frecuencia de manera solitaria o en grupos de entrenamiento. En este caso, la decisión de realizar una etnografía del fenómeno obliga al investigador a compartir las rutinas y exigencias habituales de actores que se imponen desafíos variados para completar, en el mejor tiempo posible, carreras de larga distancia. Así es que un etnógrafo, como un nativo marginal, necesita mantener un estado atlético que le permita sostener algunas de esas exigencias que además constituyen instancias fundamentales del trabajo de campo. Por ende, en este artículo se analiza al cuerpo del etnógrafo como un instrumento clave de investigación, apelando a diversas herramientas teóricas, principalmente fenomenológicas. Aunque no se plantea que este grado de involucramiento corporal sea excluyente, sí implica un recurso relevante para comprender un estilo de vida caracterizado por el desarrollo de firmes preceptos morales y estéticos. Esta fenomenología del etnógrafo-corredor permite entonces describir, a través de la conciencia encarnada, un amplio conjunto de emociones y "técnicas corporales" que son definitorias de la pasión por correr como un estilo de vida. Todo ello está orientado a desarrollar principios metodológicos que hacen a la producción del conocimiento social y que trascienden a este tipo de prácticas deportivas.

Territorialising Movement Parties: The Case of Nuevo Encuentro in Buenos Aires

AbstractHow and why do political parties, seemingly focused on electoral politics, also mobilise within contentious arenas? Drawing on qualitative research with a centre‐left Argentine party called Nuevo Encuentro (NE) in the city of Buenos Aires this paper demonstrates the importance of a geographical reading of “movement parties” for responding to this question. Specifically, the paper analyses NE’s territorialisation, understood as a strategy for organisation building via the political appropriation of space, typically by opening branches and mobilising activists in neighbourhoods. Between 2007 and 2019 NE’s strategy of territorialisation mobilised across multiple scales—the neighbourhood, city and national—yet in so doing its organisation became overstretched and struggled to engage across both contentious and electoral arenas. Through an analysis of NE’s territorialisation, grounded in the historical and geographical context of contemporary Argentina, the paper provides an original attempt to spatialise the concept of movement party.

La otra cara de la felicidad: dolor y martirio en el peronismo clásico

El artículo estudia el proceso de construcción del martirio de Eva Perón desde su aparición en el espacio político argentino hasta su muerte. Destaca el rol de Eva tanto como el de los “emprendedores morales” en la modelación del martirio y pone el foco en los valores y emociones que a través de él propiciaron tanto una comunidad emocional como una identidad política distintiva en la argentina contemporánea.