Administración y materialidad: una etnografía del Juzgado del Crimen del Rosario (Argentina, segunda mitad del siglo XIX)

Abstract

For the purpose of restoring the historical condition of the administrative activity of the state in Argentina, this article examines judicial activity in administrative terms. In doing so, it explores certain dimensions of analysis such as the times, the material, the distances, the places and the institutional dynamics that the agents of the Criminal Court of Rosario (Argentina) encountered in the performance of their duties. For this purpose it adopts an “ethnographic approach,” since the methodological exercise becomes a sort of “being there” for the anthropologist: the same agents (judges, governor, minister, political boss, justice officials) giving account of their daily activity, and the results of their actions become the subject of the study. The different dimensions presented in this research show the materiality of the everyday administrative work to which it obtains access “ethnographically” by following up on the work of judicial agents.

Keywords

• Argentina
• administration
• justice (Thesaurus); institutional ethnography
• political headquarters (Authors’).