The Ambivalent State

Release on 2019-10-15 | by Javier Auyero

Ossona, Jorge Luis. 2014. Punteros, Malandras y Porongas: Ocupación de
Tierras y Usos Políticos de La Pobreza. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI Editores.
Ossona, Jorge Luis. 2017. “Lo paradójico de la violencia es que la financia el
propio estado.

Author: Javier Auyero
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780190915568
Category: Social Science
Page: 272
View: 496

The Ambivalent State

Over the last few decades, debates about policing in poor urban areas have turned from analyzing the state's neglect and abandonment into documenting its harsh interventions and punishing presence. Yet, we know very little about the covert world of state action that is hidden from public view. In The Ambivalent State, Javier Auyero and Katherine Sobering offer an unprecedented look into the clandestine relationships between police agents and drug dealers in Argentina. Drawing on a unique combination of ethnographic fieldwork and documentary evidence, including hundreds of pages of wiretapped phone conversations, they analyze the inner-workings of police-criminal collusion, its connections to drug markets, and how it promotes cynicism and powerlessness in daily life. They argue that an up-close examination of covert state action exposes the workings of an ambivalent state: one that both enforces the rule of law and functions as a partner in criminal behavior. The Ambivalent State develops a political sociology of violence that focuses not only on what takes place in police stations, courts, and poor neighborhoods, but also the clandestine actions and interactions of police, judges, and politicians that structure daily life at the urban margins.

Language: en
Pages: 272

Making It at Any Cost

Authors: Matías Dewey

Categories: Social Science

Type: BOOK - Published: 2020-06-09 - Publisher: University of Texas Press

La Salada is South America’s largest marketplace for fraudulently labeled clothing, a sprawling and dangerous bazaar on the fringes of Buenos Aires where counterfeit goods are bought and sold, armed thieves roam the nearby streets, and corrupt police and politicians turn a blind eye to widespread unlawful behaviors. Despite conditions

Language: en
Pages: 208

In Search of the Lost Decade

Authors: Jennifer Adair

Categories: History

Type: BOOK - Published: 2019-12-03 - Publisher: University of California Press

In 1983, following a military dictatorship that left thousands dead and disappeared and the economy in ruins, Raúl Alfonsín was elected president of Argentina on the strength of his pledge to prosecute the armed forces for their crimes and restore a measure of material well-being to Argentine lives. Food, housing,