Cuadernos de antropología social

Preliminares e índice

cuerpo Editorial — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Restricted definitions of public space, urban expulsion and invisibility of homeless people in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires

Santiago Bachiller — Tue, 10 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the article analyzes the expulsive dynamics of public space aimed at homeless people in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires. As a hypothesis, it is argued that the characterization of public policies for these populations must include government measures around public space which, for some time now at present, promote the invisibilization of the street phenomenon. We are referring to the irruption of the security forces against the camps for homeless people; to the proliferation of
a hostile architecture; to neighborhood organizations aimed at eradicating homeless from “their neighborhoods”; etc. The restricted perspectives of public space justify their measures by appealing to the need to guarantee the “circulation” of “citizens” and to preserve the “landscape.” These policies predetermine legitimate presences and users in public space, forcing the constant displacement of homeless.

La Sufi Devotion.

Bruno Ferraz Bartel — Tue, 10 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article examines the centrality of invoking Allah’s name and presence in the devotional practices of two Sufi brotherhoods. I argue that dhikrs function as devotional acts structured around a triad of categories: ritual (the interplay of words and bodily gestures), aesthetics (the role of the voice in recitation), and interaction (semantic sociability and symbolic communication). Between August 2022 and January 2023, I conducted fieldwork in Rosario, Argentina, observing private gatherings in homes among converts to Islam and followers of the Naqshbandiyya order. Additionally, between March and July 2023 and between February and April 2024, I carried out ethnographic research in Niterói, Brazil, focusing on Ramadan gatherings of Muridiyya disciples at a local association, attended primarily by Senegalese of Wolof ethnicity.

The battle of many, the glamour of few

Tarcízio Macedo — Tue, 10 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article explores the forms, uses, and means through which Brazilian Free Fire players think and play using their smartphones. Based on ethnographic research conducted between 2020 and 2023 across nine Brazilian cities, it examines the spatial, material, and corporeal-technological interactions that support the competitive experience of those who play under alternative structures of knowledge and power. Drawing on the narratives of ten players from diverse contexts and regions in Brazil, the detailed description of the interventions enacted during their attempts at professionalization expands the complexities surrounding video games, esports, and the ways they are played on mobile devices.

Miners, machines and union action

Nuria Giniger, Solana Renosto — Tue, 10 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Miners in Jujuy are often overlooked as subjects in the broader discussions about mining. Yet, at the same time they have historically symbolized labor in the province. This article retraces and explores these processes of visibility and invisibility surrounding miners, drawing on collective reflections from a trade union training workshop with mining delegates from the Asociación Obrera Minera Argentina - Jujuy. The paper identifies two key tensions regarding miners’ experience as workers: first, the contrast between their self-invisibility as producers and their self-recognition as salaried employees; and second, the paradox between the technical similarities of "technical-productive" processes across different companies and the differences in working conditions. This ambivalence, is not only the driving force and expression of the invisibilization-visibility processes, but also constrains the scope of union action, revealing a broader political and labor challenge: the impossibility of bringing the issue of property into the discussion.

Entrepreneurship and community capitalization

Susana Rita Presta — Tue, 10 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Capitalism sociotechnical mutations and the reconfiguration of workforce government forms unfold especially in historical moments marked by social conflict and crises. This paper aims to problematize the extension of entrepreneurship in relation to these mutations, that are coupled with the strategic importance of encouraging forms of non-salaried work that entail a diversification of valorization processes in extraproductive areas, focusing on “community capitalization.” We will argue in relation to a process of social outsourcing of the costs of existence and reproduction of the workforce, based on power technologies anchored in the self-management of one's own life. Methodologically, the article is based on our ethnographic fieldwork on a civil association’s technological entrepreneurship project in a low-income neighborhood of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires.

From Eviction to Coexistence

Malena Pell Richards, Kaia Santisteban — Tue, 10 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper examines how the eviction of the Mapuche community Lafken Winkul Mapu (Río Negro, Argentina) led to the creation of the Territorial Community Network and its Health Commission, subsequently giving rise to the Pluricultural Committee of San Martín and Junín de los Andes. Through an ethnographic approach, the article explores the "opaque connections" that enabled the incorporation of Mapuche medicine within hospital institutions. It focuses on the "coexisting disagreements" that emerge in the interaction of different notions and practices about health, and on how knowledge is negotiated in culturally diverse settings. Based on the description of different ethnographic scenarios, we highlight the specific points of tension identified by Mapuche people in contexts of coexistence between Mapuche medicine and biomedicine. In doing so, we seek to contribute to anthropological discussions on what we understand as "open spaces" or interculturalism.

Etnografiar Emotions in Constructing of Anthropological Knowledge:

Tue, 10 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article emerges from the authors’ interest in exploring new approaches to ethnographic practice and anthropological reflection. Drawing on our fieldwork experience and our teaching of workshops and seminars for scholars interested in the relationship between emotion and anthropology, we engage with an ethnographic approach through an ‘emotional lens’. We propose integrating this perspective into the curriculum for the training of future anthropologists. The reflexivity of emotion as a category is relevant in two ways: first, as an object of study in anthropology and second, as part of the researcher’s process of knowledge construction, that is, as an essential component of the analysis of ethnographic descriptions.

Antonio Gramsci and subaltern cultures: a cartography of studies in Italy, Latin America and the Anglophone sphere (1950-1991)

Sebastián Gómez — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The article proposes a mapping of subaltern culture studies through a Gramscian prism during the period 1950-1991. The mapping hierarchises three regions that have historically animated Gramscian studies: Italy, the English-speaking world and Latin America. The hypothesis of the article is the following: during the 1970s/80s intellectuals coincided in employing Gramscian thought from academic disciplines for the study of
subaltern cultures in peripheral regions of the globe (India, Latin American countries and southern Italy). This coincidence and productivity at a time of crisis of Marxism and, therefore, of the centrality of the proletariat as a historical subject, was sustained, basically, by two reasons: a) the elaboration of research from universities or research centres that allowed the structuring of specific academic agendas; b) an appropriation of Gramsci as a theorist of popular culture capable of showing the complexity, heterogeneity and density of the life of the subaltern classes.

Estrategias y prácticas profesionales en el hospital monovalente de salud mental Carolina Tobar García: un estudio etnográfico sobre la gestión estatal de problemáticas infanto-juveniles

Axel Levin — Tue, 10 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000