Routine Politics and Violence in Argentina

Javier Auyero is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. He was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 2001 and a Harry Frank Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005. He is the author of Poor People's Politics and Contentious Lives and has published articles in Theory and Society, Ethnography, Mobilization, Latin American Research Review, and the Journal of Latin American Studies, among others. He is the current editor of Qualitative Sociology.

"This fascinating study of the Argentine food riots of December 2001 that brought down an elected president makes an important contribution to our understanding of contentious politics and to socio-political life more generally through its illumination of the understudied ‘grey zone’ where clandestine connections blur distinctions between everyday life, routine politics and collective violence. Auyero’s case study is well written and finely drawn, based on numerous interviews backed by a quantitative analysis for all relevant reported events. Especially striking are his findings on how critical action and inaction of political party brokers and the police were to the spread and then the ending of the food riots – but often in surprising ways. Auyero builds from his case material theoretically significant generalizations about the obscure and obscured actions of clientilistic party brokers facilitating widespread looting as police forces stand aside (or even participate themselves). This provocative work encourages us to look for the concealed connections between Routine Politics and Violence in many places beyond Argentina." -Charles Brockett, University of the South

• 1. The gray zone; 2. Party politics and everyday life; 3. Food lootings; 4. Moreno and La Matanza lootings; 5. Making sense of collective violence.