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This paper identifies the explanatory narratives used by perpetrators of male-male homicide in Buenos Aires (Argentina) to make sense of this crime. Drawing upon narrative criminology and masculinities theories, this study enquires into the rationalisations of perpetrators, considering their emic terms, rationalities and stories. Fieldwork was conducted between 2016 and 2020, and a convenience sample strategy was employed for participant recruitment. The analysis is based upon seventy-three narrative-biographical interviews with offenders, and field observations in prisons and homes of former convicts. The corpus was analysed following an inductive thematic coding strategy using Atlas.Ti. Eight narratives were typified, considering how men talked about agency and change, and the explanatory locus of the stories: 'rebel', 'affected', 'idiot', 'either him or me', 'repeating the story', 'gang', 'betrayed' and 'victim'. These accounts revealed two paradoxes about violence perpetration storytelling and its discursive management: men can commit a homicide and present themselves as not responsible for it and, simultaneously, they use, reconfigure and negotiate expert theories and scientific labels to explain away, excuse and justify lethal violence. This study argues that accounts are not merely neutralisation strategies, but the rationalisations of the perpetrators' experiences, and the foundation for how they relate to and inhabit penal institutions. This paper contributes to the understanding of how those explanations shape past and future actions, and how masculinities, biographical processes and violence performance are interconnected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The diverse ways that extreme climate events are expressed at the local level have represented a challenge for the development of transgenic "climate-ready" (resilient to environmental stress) seeds. Based on the Argentinean "HB4" technology, this paper analyzes how ignorance and a sunflower gene are mobilized to overcome this difficulty in soy and wheat. HB4 seeds can be understood as myopic: the technology does not obstruct the capacity of soy and wheat plants to sense droughts, but it prevents their natural reaction, which would be to put a halt on crop production and redirect their energy toward survival. Plants thus become "short-sighted" to droughts. Informed by ignorance studies and by the immunological concept of tolerance, this paper analyzes HB4 myopia as a type of nonhuman ignorance: an asset that allows plant breeders to achieve varied plant responses to droughts and to encode their capitalist values (that prioritize production over survival) into plants' DNA. Moreover, ignorance becomes a molecular commodity that can be selected, transferred between organisms, and traded in markets. HB4's prioritization of production resonates with other technologies of climate adaptation and mitigation that do not promote structural changes to the capitalist system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Finochietto thoracic retractor is a familiar instrument to most surgeons. The contributions to surgery of its inventor, Argentinean surgeon Enrique Finochietto and his brother, Ricardo Finochietto, extend far beyond a single instrument. This paper reviews their careers and legacy. Both brothers were part of an international network of elite surgeons. Their contributions are reflected in the number of instruments and eponyms associated with their name. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The victory of Mauricio Macri in the 2015 Argentine presidential election led to a kind of return of neoliberalism, soon resisted by the people and the political opposition. In this paper I will address the question of how recent regressive neoliberal policies and austerity agenda have been defied and counteracted by progressive forces and the Argentine left-wing movements. To do so, I will periodize this country's recent history and map the positions occupied by the local left in order to argue that neoliberalism has never been entirely hegemonic in Argentina. By doing this, I hope to contribute to the development of a critical theory from (and for) the global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While political communication scholarship has long underscored the importance of political talk—casual conversations about news and politics that occur in everyday situations—as a way for citizens to clarify their opinions and as a precursor for political engagement, much of this literature tends to depict political talk as uncomfortable and difficult for citizens. Yet, this focus on the challenging aspects of political talk has been informed predominantly by the US context. To what extent may a different picture emerge when looking across different cultural contexts? And how are these dynamics shaped by the affordances of the multi-platform social media environment? This paper explores these questions through a unique dataset of 122 qualitative interviews conducted between 2016 and 2019 with young people (ages 18–29) from five countries: Argentina, Finland, Israel, Japan, and the United States. Rather than solidifying the avoidance of controversial political talk as the key strategy at the disposal of young people, our findings point at a five-pronged typology of young people, with each type representing a different approach toward political talk. Our typology thus contributes to a more comprehensive and nuanced picture of various approaches towards political talk employed by young people across different countries and in relation to different digital media affordances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes the behind-the-scenes correspondence, from 1928 to 1941, between the New York Times’ news executives and editors and John W. White, who served as the paper’s first Chief South American Correspondent. An analysis of the correspondence and White’s dispatches shows that interactions between news management, foreign governments, and the U.S. State Department influenced White’s writing to the point that he avoided writing about Argentina’s neighbors; provided more positive, “Pollyanna” material; and censored his own dispatches. The study provides further evidence that Arthur Hays Sulzberger meddled in the paper’s news coverage, even before he became Times publisher in 1935. The correspondence between Sulzberger and White also calls into question the romantic myth of the autonomous foreign correspondent, free to report without fear or favor. Instead, it shows that American foreign correspondents faced scrutiny not only from their news executives and editors but also from foreign governments, police officials, local newspapers, Nazi and Fascist spies, U.S. business interests, the State Department, and even the President of the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Politics in Latin America is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Politics in Latin America is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Over the last two decades, natural resource governance has become an increasingly important element of South American regionalism as commodities became a central driver for regional development strategies. Yet, due to socio-environmental impacts and dissatisfaction with decision-making processes, it is also frequently contested. This article focuses on one particularly prominent contestation with transboundary and regional repercussions, the case of the pulp mill conflict which escalated between Argentina and Uruguay in the 2000s. Using the concepts of regionness and politics of scale, it examines in which ways the pulp mill conflict affected regional cohesion and seeks to understand why it evolved in this way. This shows that the way national governments address socio-environmental conflicts is an important additional obstacle to regional cohesion which has received little attention in studies of South American regionalism so far. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Argentina's right-wing shift in the 2015 presidential election concluded twelve years of center-left rule. The elected president, Mauricio Macri, claimed that the economy would experience normalization of existing imbalances and recover its strength in a "new political era." However, the new administration quickly restored the dominance of neoliberal economic policies through a comprehensive set of initiatives, which centrally included the return to international financial debt and equity markets and submission to the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) rules. This article analyzes Argentina's external-debt-growth process and discusses its objectives and long-term effects. This paper posits that the indebtedness process carried out by the Macri administration—and its modality—not only increased the relevance of financial capital in the Argentine economy but also structurally conditioned any future nonorthodox alternative path of development. This outcome cannot be understood without taking into account the deliberate role of the United States, the IMF, and the top companies that operate in Argentina, as well as the complicity of many political sectors. JEL Classification: H63, F34, F63 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the built environment of a shopping mall in light of recent theoretical interventions that stress the affective dimensions of everyday political life. By drawing on sixteen weeks of ethnographic fieldwork at a shopping mall in central Buenos Aires, Argentina, I explore how retail affects are unevenly distributed across a diverse public, and how different bodies, in turn, affect the mall in particular ways. In short, this paper explores embodiment as an affective experience that coheres around raced, classed, and gendered bodies at the mall. As such, this paper helps clarify how ethnographic research can benefit from nonrepresentational theory and the 'new materialism' literature that challenges prevailing conceptual approaches to the politics of consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of the fact that Argentina has experienced a process of high sustained growth that created four million jobs, income distribution did not register substantial changes. The aim of this paper is to analyze the relationship between growth, employment, and income distribution; to clarify under what conditions a virtuous cycle of growth and employment may come to not have substantial impacts on income distribution; and to address the challenges that the working class will face in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Politics in Latin America is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

While postneoliberalism is often interpreted as a societal reaction against the deleterious effects of marketization in Latin America, this paper develops a finer-grained Polanyian institutional analysis to gain better analytical purchase on the ambivalent outcomes of postneoliberal reforms. Drawing on recent insights in economic geography, and in dialogue with the Latin American structuralist tradition, we elaborate our framework through a case study of the Argentinian soy boom of the 2000s, identifying forms of market extension, redistribution, reciprocity and householding that facilitated this process. We argue for a multi-scalar approach that balances attention to national and extra-local dynamics shaping the combination of these forms, identified through the lens of the "fictitious commodities" of the soy boom: money (credit, currency and cross-border capital flows), land (in the agricultural heartland and frontier regions), labor (transformed and excluded in a "farming without farmers" model) and, we add, knowledge (biotech). Our analysis identifies internal tensions as well as overt resistance and "overflow" that ultimately led to the collapse of postneoliberal regulation of the soy complex, ushering in a wider, market-radical counter-movement. Refracting double-movement-type dynamics through the prism of heterodox institutional forms, we argue, allows for a better grasp of processes that underlie institutional recalibrations of progressive and regressive kinds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Culture has been at the core of many recent developments in the social sciences, particularly after the so-called ‘linguistic turn’. This has also been seeping into discussions about the relation between culture and politics. The present paper proposes a specific theoretical approach in this respect. It mobilizes Castoriadis’s concept of the ‘imaginary’, as well as those of ‘collective subjectivity’ and ‘social creativity’. It also makes use of the rich case of ‘populism’, more generally, and Peronism, more specifically, so as to make clear its workings in a sociological strategy that unfolds in both the theoretical and the empirically-oriented domains. The paper offers an alternative to Alexander’s and Laclau’s approaches to culture and politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Politics in Latin America is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper, we address the confidence of the agricultural producers in their prosperity as a driver of development. The agricultural sector development is highly dependent on short term investment decisions for sowing area, breeding, among others, which in turn is mediated by confidence. Agricultural producer confidence is continually measured in Argentina by CREA, a non-profit organisation composed of groups of producers spread across the country striving for innovation and best practices diffusion. We leverage this measurement methodology to propose a structural equation model to explain confidence by an exhaustive collection of factors affecting the business at company, sector or economy level, providing critical insight about the range of policies that would enable agriculture to grow. High regulation and tax burdens prevailing in the market during the past decades have been identified as relevant hindrance factors to confidence. On the enablers side are the respect for property rights and the organisation effectiveness actively fostered by CREA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the mnemonic labour of LGBT+ activists and movements. It examines activists' efforts to shape and mobilise memories for mnemonic, cultural and political change. The concept of the 'memory-activism nexus' is adopted as an analytical framework to unpack the relationship between memory in and of LGBT+ activism. This framework allows for a deeper understanding of the role of memory within the unique cultural orientation of LGBT+ movements. The article first offers an overview of the diverse approaches to mnemonic labour in the recent history of LGBT+ activism. Focusing on Argentina, the article then analyses the walk for Lesbian Visibility Day, organised in Buenos Aires by the activist collective Frente Docente Disidente in 2021. This case study shows how activists organise and sediment cultural memories for their later adaptation and (re)mobilisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work aims to provide a non-moralistic exploration and understanding of the high prevalence of adolescent pregnancy and resulting motherhood among low-income adolescent women in Greater Mendoza, Argentina. The study acknowledges that, based on official statistics, adolescent pregnancy remains a significant issue within this social group compared to teenagers from other socioeconomic backgrounds. By delving into the sexual and reproductive practices of these adolescents, the research seeks to uncover their life strategies within the context of their challenging living conditions, characterized by limited job opportunities and an inadequate, reactive educational system. Through in-depth interviews and focus groups, the study captures the lived experiences and perspectives of adolescent mothers themselves. Utilizing a sociological analysis of this empirical data, the research argues that in the face of extreme social exclusion, a lack of family support, and limited cultural capital, the concept of "class habitus " sheds light on and explains the adolescent practices that contribute to not avoid pregnancies, often influenced by traditional societal expectations of women's roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban governments need to take actions to reduce disaster risks and incorporate climate resilience into their development strategies and plans. But most local governments, particularly small- and medium-sized cities in the global South, lack the knowledge and capacity to do so. This paper presents the findings from a project that engaged local governments and other key stakeholders to develop a participatory planning process for climate resilient and inclusive urban development. The project took place in three small- to medium-sized Latin American cities: Dosquebradas, Colombia; Santa Ana, El Salvador; and Santo Tomé, Argentina. By engaging government officials and politicians, academics, technical specialists, and representatives of civil society organizations in interviews, workshops and focus group discussions, this project sought to identify a range of feasible options for climate resilient and inclusive urban development. In each city, this process provided rich, context-specific details to identify strategies and plan projects with the buy-in of city government and other key actors. The overall goal was to bring in a resilience lens to assess current and planned urban development projects in each city and reach a consensus on feasible and inclusive resilience options for development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine the different layers of the relative surplus population in Argentina and the development of the Argentinian piquetero movement, which tried to establish an alliance between employed and unemployed workers. We highlight the potentialities and the limits of this initiative, especially regarding the organisation and integration of the different layers of the relative surplus population. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper argues that the hierarchical market economy (HME) category does not provide an adequate starting point for addressing capitalist diversity in Latin America. Building from a critical perspective on the global commodity chain (GCC) and global production network (GPN) approaches, it instead considers the impact of firms’ transnational relations and the often neglected role of working-class struggles. It will argue that capitalist diversity can only be understood at the nexus of these ostensibly global and local phenomena; and by specifying the strategic decisions taken by firms in Argentina’s automobile industry, it will account for the failure of that sector. Finally, it examines the role of working-class struggles in the industry in Córdoba, Argentina, arguing that these were vital in shaping the specific and unstable form of capitalist diversity in Argentina, as well as potential alternatives to it. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Public sector unions are increasingly becoming the hegemonic contemporary labor actor in terms of membership and militancy in both advanced and emerging economies. However, political economy lacks a unified theoretical approach to study mobilization by state unions. The analysis of public sector union politics has been largely separated by regional (United States vs. Europe vs. Global South) and disciplinary (American politics vs. comparative politics/political sociology) divides. We contend that though both public and private workers belong to the subaltern classes, public sector union politics and mobilization have different foundations than in the private sector. Unlike private unions, state labor mobilization is essentially driven by what we call the "reverse economic cycle" (militancy increases in bad—rather than good—economic times), by the legal enforcement of bargaining rights (which in contrast to the private sector substantially varies across and within democracies), and by the likelihood of a political exchange between labor and the government. Argentine teachers between 2006 and 2019 provide an ideal laboratory to test this argument through a multilevel (i.e., national and subnational), mixed-methods strategy, which includes comparative and statistical assessments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autistic children and their caregivers in Argentina often lack access to information, resources and evidence-based interventions. Caregiver empowerment may help support families to uphold their child's rights and access suitable education and support. This study aimed to examine the perceptions on empowerment of caregivers of autistic children in Argentina. This was a phenomenological, qualitative study. We conducted 32 semi-structured individual interviews remotely. Participants included caregivers, health service providers, non-governmental organisation representatives, special education teachers and policy representatives. Data were analysed thematically. We developed three main themes: Caregiver agency: from intuitive coping strategies to entrepreneurship; 'I had to cut down on therapy': Economic instability and inequality affecting service access; and Equipping caregivers to be empowered. Both caregivers and professionals talked about the contribution of socio-economic inequalities to caregivers' sense of disempowerment. Caregivers identified coping strategies and discussed their experiences with advocacy. They expressed that in-person and online support groups have an empowering effect. Based on participant views, strategies supporting caregiver empowerment may involve: interventions are co-designed by professionals and caregivers; focusing on caregiver mental health; and addressing the profound impact of poverty on the quality of life of families. Caregivers of children with developmental disabilities, including autism, often struggle to access services, information and resources in Argentina. Little is known about how caregivers can be empowered to support their children as they wish to in the Argentinian setting. We spoke with 32 people online to understand existing and potential practices of supporting caregivers. The people we spoke with included caregivers, health service providers, non-governmental organisations' representatives providing services or technical support, special education teachers and policy representatives. Participants said that poverty, and inequalities in accessing support, impact how caregivers can support their children. They mentioned examples that help caregivers feel empowered, such as peer support groups and caregiver training. Many caregivers spoke about how they became advocates for their children and how they developed initiatives such as advocacy campaigns and well-being support groups. Caregivers in Argentina may be empowered in various ways, and the following strategies can improve empowerment: strengthening collaboration between professionals and caregivers; focusing on caregiver mental health; and addressing the profound impact of poverty on the quality of life of families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Argentina and Australia endured among the most severe COVID-19 lockdowns globally. This study examined which artistic creative activities (ACAs) Argentinians in the Buenos Aries region used to support their mental health and wellbeing and compared these findings with existing data for Australians (primarily from Victoria) across a similar period. Adult Argentinians (N = 86) responded to an online survey regarding 27 listed ACAs, as well as ratings of anxiety, depression, and loneliness. While "watching films and television" was the most commonly reported ACA, it was not rated as effective in supporting mental health and wellbeing. Conversely, musical ACAs were ranked highest. We consider evidence from Australia, North America, and South America that musical ACAs (especially music listening) have been most effective at supporting mental health and wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic by way of avoidance-based emotion regulation. We also conclude from the data that Argentinians tended to place greater importance on music-based ACAs than Australians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The work of Buenos Aires’ cartoneros (informal recyclers) has important environmental and economic repercussions for the city. This paper investigates cartoneros’ working and living conditions, establishing a 2007 baseline for the logistics of informal recycling practice in Buenos Aires and providing a description of the socioeconomic characteristics of these workers at a key moment in time. Under the purview of a new chief of government elected in 2007, a formalization plan for cartoneros was initiated in 2011. This paper assesses some of the potential impacts of this plan on cartoneros and their work, and suggests that while such a system may benefit some workers (providing them with increased income, social acceptability and improved relationships with the municipality), there are also potential drawbacks to the formalization plan (including possible difficulties instituting a cooperative system with previously unorganized workers and the labour exclusion of more socially marginalized cartoneros). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Journal of Politics in Latin America is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The goal of this paper is to suggest that municipalities can facilitate the central government's ability to carry out its desired policy goals. Using three institutional variables that provide internal evidence for each case, I will argue that within some institutional configurations the center may seek uniformity of outcome by trying to circumvent governors and/or regional intermediation and forge a direct relationship with municipalities. Based on research from the area of social protection policy in Brazil and Argentina, I suggest that direct national-local collaboration contributed to the ability of the Brazilian central government to bypass governors and evenly spread non-contributory welfare goods across its territory and alleviate poverty. I argue that such policy collaboration is less likely to be institutionally feasible in a federal system like Argentina's, where such equivalent collaboration is impeded by the ability of its provinces to directly capture local units of government and undermine national policy outcomes and executive preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an expert-based operationalization strategy to measure the degree of democracy in the Argentine provinces. Starting with a mainstream and "thick" definition of regime type, I assess each of its aspects using a subjective or perception-based approach that taps the knowledge of experts on the politics of each province. I present and justify the methodological design of the resulting Survey of Experts on Provincial Politics (SEPP) and conduct a preliminary analysis of its results. Some aspects of the provincial regimes appear to be clearly democratic, while others are mixed or even leaning towards authoritarianism. Moreover, some show little interprovincial variance, while others vary considerably from province to province. An analysis of the central tendency and dispersion of the survey items allows for a general description of the Argentine provincial regimes. Inclusion is the most democratic dimension, while the effectiveness of institutional constraints on the power of the Executive is the most deficient. Electoral contestation is generally free of traditional forms of fraud, but incumbents often command far more campaign resources and media attention than do their challengers. Physical repression is rare, but opponents in some provinces face subtler forms of punishment. While the survey does not uncover any clear cases of subnational authoritarianism, stricto sensu, provincial regimes do vary significantly from basically democratic to clearly hybrid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on data from Argentina's Permanent Household Survey, the method of analysis used in this study permits the rate of precarious work in Argentina in 2017 and its trend in 2003–2017 to be determined more accurately than before. The figure in 2017 was 47 percent, and women, younger people, the less educated, and the foreign-born were more likely to have precarious jobs. A separate analysis of the categories that constitute precarious work provides unique insight on the interrelation among employment relations, economic growth, and labor-capital conflict. Lastly, the findings provide support for the existence of a range of productivity levels across firms instead of a sharp distinction between formal and informal sectors of the economy and a continuous inverse relationship with precarious employment. En base a datos de la Encuesta Permanente de Hogares de Argentina, el método de análisis utilizado en este estudio permite determinar la tasa de trabajo precario en Argentina en 2017 y su tendencia en 2003–2017 con mayor precisión que antes. La cifra en 2017 fue del 47 por ciento, y las mujeres, los jóvenes, los menos educados y los nacidos en el extranjero tenían más probabilidades de tener trabajos precarios. Un análisis separado de las categorías que constituyen el trabajo precario proporciona una visión única de la interrelación entre las relaciones laborales, el crecimiento económico y el conflicto laboral-capital. Por último, los hallazgos respaldan la existencia de una gama de niveles de productividad de las empresas del mismo sector en lugar de una distinción clara entre los sectores formales e informales de la economía y una relación inversa continua con el empleo precario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades there has been a tendency throughout Latin America of the expansion of activities associated with the primary sector, such as mining, oil, cattle and soy, namely reprimarization. This tendency reflects the growth of the commodities markets and China in recent years. This paper examines the implications for both the environment and development in general, as a result of the reprimarization tendency in Argentina and Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the concept of the instituting force of activist archives. It does so by analyzing the epistemological and ontological implications of describing and arranging archival materials, and narrativizing them in curatorial work, in the case of the Archivo de la Memoria Trans de Argentina—Trans Memory Archive of Argentina. On the one hand, the archival arrangement provides trans people with a frame of recognition for trans lives and transforms individual memories into collectable and usable cultural memories for activism. On the other hand, the appropriation of the language of the family in curatorial works incorporates trans memories into the framework of Argentinian post-dictatorship transition. This allows activists to gain access to, and adapt, an entire repertoire for trans causes and activist kinship. The article supports the analytical work and the presented theoretical hypothesis by creating a dialogue between cultural memory studies and critical archival studies, for the exploration of memory activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the role of think tanks as members of civil society in Latin America. Our goal is to present an initial conceptualization and measurement of the role think tanks play in the foreign policy sub-subsystem. We focus on three of the most influential think tanks in the region: CARI (Argentina), CEBRI (Brazil), and COMEXI (Mexico). This paper suggests that the state’s characteristics and the character of its civil society determine the type and strength of its think tanks. This paper also considers the challenges that think tanks face in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico more generally by comparing each chosen think tank’s board, public activities, presence in local media and social media, and publications. We conclude that there have yet to be significant incentives and resources available for thinks tanks in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico to grow and, thus, Latin American think tanks’ activities typically follow their governments’ agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid spread of the automobile in the early twentieth century posed both challenges and promises to nation states. Before automobility became the object of public policies, this new mobility technology had to be socially perceived and constructed as belonging to the public sphere. Motorist associations played a decisive role in this process. This paper focuses on the Argentine Automobile Club (ACA) and the Argentine Touring Club (TCA), the two principal automobile clubs in the country and the largest ones in Latin America during the first half of the twentieth century. It argues that the ACA and TCA had a decisive influence during the 1920s in diagnosing and listing possible solutions to road and tourism challenges, and providing reference points for most of the road and tourism policies in the following decades. At the same time, both clubs actively helped to create a national network of roads through their participation in the planning agencies and made the new roadways accessible by signposting them and by providing petrol stations. Not least they formed and spread the new practices of road culture and automobility and, by organising sporting events, tours and rally drives and printing travel guides and maps, they contributed to the symbolic construction of the roads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates a moment of shift in urban neoliberal governance strategies under the purview of a new municipal Chief of Government of Buenos Aires at the end of the 2000s: the introduction of a regime of public space that has had implications for the waste management sector (and particularly informal recyclers or cartoneros). I document government attempts to re-represent the city as a modern, hygienic centre that is receptive to investment and tourism, drawing on discursive framings of public space that seek to redefine legitimate users and uses of the city. Such framings are exclusionary of cartoneros and other marginalized urbanites. As with most forms of actually existing neoliberalism, this regime is contradictory and unstable, both containing and provoking challenges to its coherence. This case study of 'actually existing neoliberalism' in Buenos Aires encourages analytical focus on moments of shift and renewal in urban processes of neoliberalization. In this case the shift marked by the introduction of the regime of public space reveals the priorities and agendas of urban elites as championed by municipal governments, makes visible the paradoxes and contradictions inherent to neoliberal urbanisms, and also exposes openings for resistance, opposition, and renegotiation of urban neoliberal agendas (including protest, discursive reframings of the city and its uses, and the forging of indeterminate alliances). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Sociology is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The dismantling of the Tupac Amaru Neighborhood Organization in Jujuy, Argentina, a major provider of jobs and services, generated limited resistance even among people who had benefited from it. Exploration of the role of counterhegemonic challenges in this process through ethnographic fieldwork, interviews with activists and scholars, newspaper archives, and social movement materials shows that the organization purposefully increased the visibility of stigmatized segments of Jujuy society, defying official narratives about the province. This strategy allowed the organization to recruit members and raise its national profile but also engendered the unified opposition of local elites, which used their control of strategic assets to turn public opinion against activists, portraying them as violent, corrupt, and above all foreign. El desmantelamiento de la Organización vecinal Túpac Amaru en Jujuy, Argentina, un importante proveedor de empleos y servicios, generó una resistencia limitada incluso entre las personas que se habían beneficiado de ella. Una exploración de trabajo de campo etnográfico en torno al papel que jugaron los desafíos contrahegemónicos en este proceso, así como entrevistas con activistas y académicos, y consulta de materiales hemerotécnicos y de movimientos sociales muestra que la organización aumentó deliberadamente la visibilidad de segmentos estigmatizados de la sociedad jujeña, desafiando las narrativas oficiales sobre la provincia. Esta estrategia permitió a la organización reclutar miembros y elevar su perfil nacional, pero también engendró la oposición unificada de las élites locales, que utilizaron su control de activos estratégicos para volver a la opinión pública en contra de los activistas, presentándolos como violentos, corruptos y, sobre todo, foráneos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine a phenomenon we call "credit claiming by labeling" in which a sitting politician places her name on a project, program, or policy with the goal of claiming credit for it. While the prevalence of this practice suggests that many politicians believe that credit claiming by labeling will aid their careers, there is little existing evidence on this question. We examine the effects of credit claiming by labeling with a survey experiment in Argentina. We find that it has a negative, though small, effect on respondents' attitudes. Descriptive data suggests that these results stem from the perceived pervasiveness of the practice. We then use evidence from an additional treatment on the (un)biased selection of program beneficiaries to show that respondents actually reward politicians who neither label nor manipulate programs. These results suggest substantial obstacles to overturning citizens' negative baseline beliefs about the politicized implementation of government programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic publishing is one of the most unequal areas of the circulation of ideas. Recent studies have analyzed the dominance of ISI-style standards and its consequences for scientific production in the periphery. This article delves into the Latin American publishing circuit and its performance in the midst of four different types of circuits in the world academic system: (a) mainstream ‘international’ publishing circuits, sustained by major private enterprises and publishing houses (Thomson Reuters, Elsevier, Google); (b) transnational networks and repositories built as open access (DOAJ, Dial-net, INASP) to create an alternative to previous (c) regional Southern circuits (LATINDEX, SCIELO, CLACSO, REDALYC, AJOL); and (d) national circuits based on local publications. Given that these four circuits all come into play in national scientific fields, this article addresses the case of Argentina in order to prove that these circuits are segmented, partly due to the hierarchies of the World Scientific System and partly to structural constraints and the local history of professionalization. Focusing on tenure evaluations for research positions at Argentina’s National Scientific Research Council (CONICET), the article examines the results of a survey among coordinators of the council’s evaluation committees in order to analyze the relationship between international publishing and tenure. By exploring the evaluative culture at CONICET, common trends are highlighted along with alternative forms of regional academic prestige. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the challenges posed by the end of the Second World War and the early post-war period, the Argentinian governments foresaw aviation as a pillar of its national and international presence. Argentina created the Air Force, nationalised ground aerial infrastructures, placed domestic flights under state control and in 1950, all Argentinian airlines were nationalised and merged into a single state-owned enterprise: Aerolíneas Argentinas. Meanwhile, Argentinian leadership aggressively negotiated bilateral agreements. This paper analyses aviation policy (both domestic and international) of the first Peronista decade from 1945 to 1955, framing it as a response to limit USA expansion into South America, building Argentinian hegemony in the region and consolidating the ongoing process of industrialisation and economic autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper describes the development of a credit fund programme in informal settlements in Buenos Aires, Argentina, over a 15-year period from 1993 to 2007. It focuses on the creation, implementation and sustainability of credit funds for housing improvement and how these developed and changed in response to both external factors and programme dynamics. It pays particular attention to the programme's most recent phase, in which the management of the funds was decentralized into separate neighbourhood funds in three communities. It explains how each neighbourhood fund is managed, especially the role of the women who administer them. It also analyzes their respective levels of performance and considers prospects and challenges for the future. The authors conclude that credit fund initiatives based on modest financial resources have the potential not only to catalyze housing improvements but also to strengthen community capacity by delegating project management to the grassroots. In this way, when supported by a partner civil society organization with experience of intervention in the area, such initiatives can be more flexible and more sustainable than top-down interventions. The paper recommends that project funding decisions for microcredit programmes should take account of their potential to build social capacity, strengthen grassroots organizations, engage community participation and complement other local programmes (including improving relations with local government agencies), rather than focus only on financial sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paper presented at the Sixth Water Information Summit: Breaking The Barriers Let Water Information Flow! Waterweb Consortium and IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre September 9-12 Delft, The Netherlands 2003. Describes the aims, development and functions of the Integrated Information System of the FREPLATA Project and the creation of the Rio de la Plata and its Maritime Front Portal, a cooperative Internet gateway to environmental and spatial information on the Rio de Plata region. The FREPLATA project is a cooperative activity of 18 institutions in Argentina and Uruguay. The Project and institutions with suitably trained personnel designed, developed and implemented databases, applications and standards which enable the systematization of information and constitute tools for management and decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a profile of clients seen by male sex workers (MSWs) in Córdoba, Argentina. Thirty-two MSWs completed a diary after each paid sexual encounter with a client over a two-week period. The results show that 254 commercial sex encounters were reported. More than half of these encounters were with first time clients. The most common source of recruiting clients was advertisements followed by street contact. The majority of the clients were aged in their 30s or 20s, and identified as 'middle class' and 'bisexual' or 'gay'. In the majority of the encounters, alcohol or drugs were not used by clients, and in about less than half of the cases, the MSWs had some personal tracing information about the client. Most of the clients indicated to the MSW what sexual activity they wanted and unsafe anal sex was requested in a minority (6%) of the encounters. While most workers reported having no or little attraction to the client, most indicated that they would serve the client again. The implications of the results for public health education and further research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the origins of the term lawfare, as well as different definitions developed in the Global North and the Global South while proposing a conceptualization linked to the particularities of this socio-legal phenomenon in Latin America. Focusing on the cases of Brazil and Argentina the article deploys the notions of phycological, judicial and media warfare to analyze the different dimensions that an analysis of lawfare opens in relation to democracy, the penal system, and mainstream media. The article also explores different dimensions of lawfare and a notion in Spanish with the potential to replace the anglicism: dripping coup (golpe por goteo). Finally, the article proposes different measures to counteract lawfare in the judicial, educational, media, and social spheres. In particular, the conclusions refer to the relevance of social movements in what can be conceptualized as a "cautionary popular criminology". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this exploratory study, I conduct a textual analysis of the online content produced by two Argentine feminist news outlets, LatFem and Diario Digital Femenino (DDF) to examine how feminist standpoint epistemologies (FSE) shape news-making. The findings show that these newsrooms showcase features of a strong reflexivity which allows journalists to consider their own position in the social fabric, to contextualize their journalistic practices, and to question instances of systemic discrimination. Furthermore, the use of FSE enables the expression of solidarity and advocacy by reporters. I argue that the intervention to journalism as performed by feminist Argentine journalists and editors yields profound transformations to journalism practice and news content, as FSE destabilize and complicate traditional notions of journalistic objectivity and its role in democratic societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, political leaders from around the world have been provided with a tour of Argentina's Parque de la Memoria. What explains their detour from the affairs of state to a park that commemorates the victims of Argentina's military dictatorship? How do these visits sit alongside other, everyday uses of the space? Borrowing from de Certeau, I interpret these practices as practices of memory. I analyse the 'pedestrian speech acts' through which key stakeholders attempt to divert these practices towards a particular construction of the memory space. The invitation to a global political elite can be read as a strategy to protect the symbolic order of the memory of the desaparecidos by performatively enacting a transnational community of memory in mourning. This leaves the park vulnerable to those who would mobilise these mourning rituals as a tactic to dismantle any politics that might take place at the park. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The working conditions, relative wages, and social standing of care occupations are the result of diverse causes that can worsen, improve, or neutralize the labor disadvantages usually found in care occupations. This article seeks to provide a perspective on the factors underlying care workers’ working conditions in Argentina. It presents a comparative analysis of three highly feminized occupations—early education teachers, nurses, and domestic workers. After highlighting the different working conditions among these occupations, the paper focuses on the critically important role that unionization and state policies have played in defining each labor context in Argentina. The analysis shows how workers’ evaluation of their occupation and working conditions are fundamentally shaped by these two variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysis of the media coverage of the measures opposing violence against women adopted by the governments of Argentina and Chile during the COVID-19 pandemic reveals that it sensationalized the violence without providing any in-depth analysis of the situation or adopting an intersectional perspective. Un análisis de la cobertura mediática en torno a las medidas para combatir la violencia contra las mujeres adoptadas por los gobiernos de Argentina y Chile durante la pandemia del COVID-19 revela que, si bien se sensacionalizó la violencia, esto se hizo sin profundizar en la situación o tomar una perspectiva interseccional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]