Description
Book SynopsisThis volume examines the power that can be imposed, and the misery that is caused, especially for the poor, by the simple act of waiting. Although set in Buenos Aires, Auyero describes a variety of different situations, including waiting for national identity cards, for welfare agencies, and the endless waiting for relocation from the slums.
Trade Review“...this [book] is a careful and beautifully written ethnographic
investigation of the contours of ordinary people’s lives under
neoliberalism in Argentina.” - Gianpaolo Baiocchi,
American Journal of Sociology“
Patients of the State is an insightful and long-overdue exploration of how the worst Latin American welfare programs reinforce powerlessness and subcitizenship even as they sporadically relieve economic misery. Vividly describing the phenomenally cavalier ways in which the governmental agencies of Buenos Aires waste poor people’s time and resources, Javier Auyero calls attention to the insidious violence of systems that sap political initiative and hobble complex and delicate urban survival strategies. With this study, he has once again opened new pathways for the study of contemporary Latin American poverty.”—
Brodwyn Fischer, author of
A Poverty of Rights: Citizenship and Inequality in Twentieth-Century Rio de Janeiro“In this brilliant, insightful, and sensitive investigation, Javier Auyero brings careful ethnographic research to bear on the routine temporal experiences of people who seek help and social services from the state. In doing so, he shows us how the state constructs political dominance through the control of its citizens’ time and temporal experience. By making the urban poor wait for whatever they need, the state creates subordination and political resignation.
Patients of the State will have a major impact on scholarly and public discourse; it helps us see what is happening to millions of people around the world.”—
Michael G. Flaherty, author of
The Textures of Time: Agency and Temporal Experience"
Patients of the State shines in providing empiricalevidence in support of the importance of waiting for understanding the ways in which power and domination are played out in practice in the relations between the urban poor and the front-line bureaucrats of the state.... [It] shines in providing empirical in support of the importance of waiting for understanding the ways in which power and domination are played out in practice in the relations between the urban poor and the front-line bureaucrats of the state." -- Marcela López Levy * Journal of Latin American Studies *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments xi
Introduction. Tempography: Waiting Now and Then 1
1. The Time of the Denizens 23
2. Urban Relegation and Forms of Regulation Poverty 36
3. Poor People's Waiting: Speeding Up Time, but Still Waiting 64
4. The Welfare Office 92
5.
Periculum in Mora: Flammable Revisited 128
Conclusion 153
Epilogue 162
Methodological Appendix 165
Notes 169
Works Cited 175
Index 191
