The ways of requesting and networks of life reproduction

Multitemporal ethnographic vignettes situated in a locality of the Calchaquí Valley in Salta, Argentina

Abstract

This article reflects on the relationship between politics and popular sectors based on an ethnographic exploration that links the past and present in a rural town in the Valles Calchaquíes region, province of Salta, northern Argentina. The forms of access to resources and basic goods for the reproduction of life and the social relations involved in this are investigated. The analysis interrelates the dismantling of the residential work system of wine estates, the traditional forms of access to land and housing with the process of formation of statehood networks at the municipal level. Two moments are taken, the 1970s and 80s and 2019-2020 and two ethnographic routes of treatment: the social plots of the implementation of the first social housing plan in the town of Animaná (San Carlos department) and the interactions involved around municipal “aid” and “assistance”. The methodological strategies complement field work in the field - the observation and recording of everyday situations and conducting interviews in different periods with multiple social actors - with the analysis of administrative documents and written sources of institutional origin.