Cahiers des Amériques Latines (Dec 2002)

Pratiques et discours de l’altérité négative dans le cadre de la crise Argentine

  • Edgardo Manero

DOI
https://doi.org/10.4000/cal.7018
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 41
pp. 55 – 76

Abstract

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In Argentina, the increase in poverty which accompanied the neo-liberal cycle has renewed social tensions affecting political representation. The crisis of December 2001 installed social protest, but it also re-launched another strong, more primitive form of social revolt: delinquency. These two phenomenons of the decomposition of public order have been used to found new strategies of social discipline based on a modification of the concept of negative otherness evident since the 1990s. The institution of a new internal neighbourliness is the characteristic of contemporary Argentina. The relation with a menacing “other” based on the ideological neighbourliness of the cold war has lost its legitimacy to the advantage of the proximity of a social “other”. This will have profound consequences on the practice of institutions of security. Confronted by the concern aroused by delinquency, a large political space and its media outlets, occult the social dimension, preferring to increase the means of security or orientate civic action towards social control.

Keywords