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This article seeks to analyze, from an ethnographic point of view, the local dynamics in an Argentinean microcredit program administered by the national government in the Pampean region during the first decade of the 21st century. The study of interpersonal relationships between promoters and beneficiaries shows that microcredit dynamics develops through practices of both giving-receiving-returning and keeping-rejecting-to-giveback. This is because beneficiaries evaluate the time given to the program as a substitute for the credit they are required to reimburse. I assert that these practices do not make up opposing logics but relational dynamics that motivate a renegotiation of the terms of exchange. The study shows that some cases and events that are considered "failures" from the point of view of the promoters of the program are experienced as mutual aid practices from the point of view of beneficiaries. By contrasting these perspectives regarding solidarity, I intend to show that "failures" in the program are also the expression of a native form of valorization based on the exchange of time for money. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The city inside the city: on relational density of a public space in Lisbon ♦ The urban space where three public and central Lisbon city squares intersect is seen as an important node of encounters at the metropolitan level. Thus, it is a living space that welcomes the whole dynamic of a social practice in an updated transnational context. Sociability, meetings, and interactions are discussed in this article to describe a relational city in which the diversity of actors tends to disappear behind a common practice. And in a context characterized by a persistent co-presence, attending the public square is shifted into a shared practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]