How Do the Urban Poor Survive? A Comparative Ethnography of Subsistence Strategies in Argentina, Ecuador, and Mexico.

Drawing on ethnographic data collected in three informal communities, one in Argentina, one in México, and one in Ecuador, we address the long-standing question posed by Larissa Lomnitz's and Carol Stack's now-classic studies of how impoverished people not only survive but what strategies they adopt in an attempt to build a dignified life. By focusing on the diversity of strategies by which the urban poor solve the everyday problems of individual and collective reproduction, we move beyond the macro-level analysis of structural constraint and material deprivation. Our findings show a remarkable continuity in the difficulties residents of these informal communities confronted and the problem-solving strategies they resorted to. We found that networks of kin and friends continue to play a crucial role in how poor people not only survive but attempt to get ahead. Additionally, we highlight the role of patronage networks and collective action as central to strategies by which the urban poor cope with scarcity and improve their life chances, while also paying close attention to ways in which they deal with pressing issues of insecurity and violence. The paper shows that poor people's survival strategies are deeply imbricated in routine political processes.

Afterword. Going Granular.

The articles in this special issue demonstrate that ethnography is an unparalleled way of penetrating and making sense of what the state is and does, of how ordinary citizens think and feel about it and, in the process, perpetuate and/or challenge existing relationships with it.

[The State, waiting and political domination among the poor: interview with the sociologist Javier Auyero]. / El Estado, la espera y la dominación política en los sectores populares: entrevista al sociólogo Javier Auyero.

The extensive work of Javier Auyero regarding the poor in Latin America is disturbing in its sociological and political complexity. Instead of falling into the commonplace explorations of how inhabitants at the margins of our cities live, suffer and relate, his twenty years of research have focused on the consequences of neoliberalism in urban marginality. In light of the publication of his last book Patients of the State (2013), Salud Colectiva invited Auyero to reflect on the connections, not always observed, between waiting and political domination in government offices, schools and hospitals. His ethnographic strategy allows him to enter without prejudices into a social universe marked by polarizing political positions. He affirms that in the everyday encounters of poor people with the diverse forms of state power, practices are reproduced ­ not all of which are equally conscious and planned ­ that impart a political education and end up turning those who should be citizens into patients of the State.

El Estado, la espera y la dominación política en los sectores populares: entrevista al sociólogo Javier Auyero. / [The State, waiting and political domination among the poor: interview with the sociologist Javier Auyero].

The extensive work of Javier Auyero regarding the poor in Latin America is disturbing in its sociological and political complexity. Instead of falling into the commonplace explorations of how inhabitants at the margins of our cities live, suffer and relate, his twenty years of research have focused on the consequences of neoliberalism in urban marginality. In light of the publication of his last book Patients of the State (2013), Salud Colectiva invited Auyero to reflect on the connections, not always observed, between waiting and political domination in government offices, schools and hospitals. His ethnographic strategy allows him to enter without prejudices into a social universe marked by polarizing political positions. He affirms that in the everyday encounters of poor people with the diverse forms of state power, practices are reproduced ¡ not all of which are equally conscious and planned ¡ that impart a political education and end up turning those who should be citizens into patients of the State.

Pacientes del estado

Contenido: Tempografía. La espera ahora y antes. El tiempo de los pobladores. Relegación urbana y formas de regulación de la pobreza. La espera de los pobres. El Ministerio de Desarrollo Social. Periculum in mora. Epílogo. Apéndice metodológico. Bibliografía

Patients of the state: an ethnographic account of poor people's waiting.

Drawing on six months of ethnographic fieldwork in the main welfare office of the city of Buenos Aires, this article dissects poor people's lived experiences of waiting. The article examines the welfare office as a site of intense sociability amidst pervasive uncertainty. Poor people's waiting experiences persuade the destitute of the need to be patient, thus conveying the implicit state request to be compliant clients. An analysis of the sociocultural dynamics of waiting helps us understand how (and why) welfare clients become not citizens but patients of the state.

Inflamable: estudio del sufrimiento ambiental

Contenido: Villas del Riachuelo: la vida en medio del peligro, la basura y el veneno. El polo y el barrio. Mundos y palabras tóxicas. Las (confusas y equívocas) categorías de los dominados. Una esperanza expuesta. Etnografía y sufrimiento ambiental...

Clientelismo político: las caras ocultas / Claves para todos

Trabajo de campo sobre los mecanismos en que se sustentan las redes de clientelismo

Clientelismo político: las caras ocultas / Claves para todos

Trabajo de campo sobre los mecanismos en que se sustentan las redes de clientelismo