Description
Book Synopsis"Political clientelism" is a term used to characterise the contemporary relationships between political elites and the poor in Latin America in which goods and services are traded for political favours. This title presents the ethnography of urban clientelism ever carried out in Argentina.
Trade Review“At the level of most political science literature on urban poverty and clientelism, this work is genuinely pathbreaking. Combining the best of ‘thick description’ ethnography with a sense of more global processes at work in a society, Auyero uses the most up-to-date analytical frameworks to interrogate an object of study that has rarely—if ever—been so addressed. This is a book to be reckoned with over the next few years and beyond.”—Daniel James, author of
Doña María’s Story: Life History, Memory, and Political Identity “Other people write about patronage politics as a form of organization, as a scourge to eradicate, or as a necessary evil on the way to full democracy. Javier Auyero writes about it as a raucous, improvised, crucial way of surviving poverty and inequality. Reporting perceptive first-hand observations in playful, energetic prose, Auyero illuminates poor people’s politics in Argentina and elsewhere.”—Charles Tilly, Columbia University
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Who Is Who in the Peronist Network xiii
Introduction: The Day of the Rally
Complaining about T-shirts on Peron's Birthday 1
1. "They Were Mostly Poor People"
Poverty and Inequality in Contemporary Buenos Aires 29
2. "Most of Them Were Coming from Villa Paraiso"
History and Lived Experiences of Shantytown Dwellers 45
3. "They Knew Matilde"
The Problem-Solving Network 80
4. "We Will Fight Forever, We Are Peronists"
Eva Peron as a Public Performance 119
5. The "Clientelist" Viewpoint
How Shantytown Dwellers Perceive and Evaluate Political Clientelism 152
6. "They Were All Peronists"
The Remnants of the Populist Heresy 182
Conclusions
Problem Solving through Political Mediation as a Structure of Feeling 205
Epilogue
Last Rally 215
Notes 219
Bibliography 237
Index 255
