Identidades (Jun 2015)
Contornos (políticos) de la sustentabilidad (económica): notas etnográficas a partir del estudio de dos organizaciones de la “economía social
Abstract
Sustainability is one of the most complex topics in the field of the so-called “social economy”: it is at the same time a requirement that regulates the circulation of resources and one of the top imperatives from which these experiences are interpellated. From an ethnographic approach, in return, sustainability can be seen not just as form of government that permeates the daily practices of these experiences, but also a language that habilitates and stresses the ways of acting, and above all a horizon that challenges the everyday practices of the persons who promote, participate and integrate them. In this article, we confront data from our ethnographic research with two organizations that in a first look can be thought as opposite vertices regarding the problem of sustainability: a foundation that gives loans to work cooperatives and one cooperative that is dedicated to waste recycling. We propose the idea of an inverted mirror to highlight that the comparative potential developed here does not lie in the similarities and contrast evidence but on the possibility of addressing the complexity of the problem illuminating complementary and competing aspects. From this reconstruction we propose an analysis of the way that the language of the sustainability is crossed and through political practices of political construction form which these experiences are defined and ultimately redefines the category itself.
