”<i>Contentious Lives</i> dares to present the lives of two women who lived hard times but at a certain moment plunged into popular movements and then had to bear the consequences of their participation, to make sense of what they had done, and to fashion new relations with other people. The two women have entrusted Javier Auyero with stories few others would want to see in print: stories of suffering, indiscretion, indecision, bitterness, regret, and passion.”—Charles Tilly, Columbia University
”Javier Auyero proves that you can go home again—and that with the proper experience elsewhere you can see more than you would have noticed if you had never left. Returning to his native Argentina as a sympathetic, well trained observer of political conflict, he shows us how intense personal lives and passionate political participation connect with each other. Auyero tells stories of Argentinian political and economic crises from an entirely fresh perspective.”—Viviana Zelizer, Princeton University
Auyero reconstructs Nana’s and Laura’s biographies through oral histories and diaries. Drawing on interviews with many other protesters, newspaper articles, judicial records, government reports, and video footage, he provides sociological and historical context for their stories. The women’s accounts reveal the frustrations of lives overwhelmed by gender domination, the deprivations brought about by hyper-unemployment and the withering of the welfare component of the state, and the achievements and costs of collective action. Balancing attention to large-scale political and economic processes with acknowledgment of the plurality of meanings emanating from personal experiences, Contentious Lives is an insightful, penetrating, and timely contribution to discussions of popular resistance and the combined effects of globalization, neoliberal economic policies, and political corruption in Argentina and elsewhere.
6. The Lived Sixteenth: The Feast and the Remains of the Riot 137
7. Nana’s Life: “Thirty-six Years of Crap” 153
8. Contested Memories 172
Conclusions: Ethnography and Recognition 191
Appendix. On Fieldwork, Theory, and the Question of Biography 201
Notes 209
References 217
Index 229
About the Series ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: On the Intersection of Individual and Collective Biographies and Protest 1
Part I. The Picketer 15
1. The Day before the Pueblada: A Town on the Edge 29
2. Laura’s Life: “How Did I Fall So Far?” 48
3. Being-in-the-Road: Insurgent Identities 60
4. After the Road: Contentious Legacies 89
Part II. The Queen of the Riot 101
Produktdetaljer
Biographical note
Javier Auyero is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is the author of Poor People's Politics: Peronist Survival Networks and the Legacy of Evita (Duke University Press), winner of the 2001 Best Book award from the New England Council of Latin American Studies (neclas) and a finalist for the C. Wright Mills Award.