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The opposition between the categories of shantytown and neighborhood has been crucial in the disciplinary analyses of popular habitat in Argentina. The urbanization of a shantytown in Great Buenos Aires enables us to refresh this discussion, setting the categories into motion. The ethnographic analysis of the category of neighborhood in the urbanization of Villa Torres (La Matanza) will help to explore how this shantytown is constructed as “emblem" for public policies, receiving various resources. In fact, this paper will analyze how the urbanization is legitimized through an image of the neighborhood, of the urbanization and of the people in charge of it as “gente del barrio" [people from the neighborhood] in order to show how local knowledge is implied in this public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I consider how the category of fear is constructed in Buenos Aires-a category, as Hegel would say, that considers a unilateral recognition of the actors involved. It is interesting to examine whether the middle or upper class residents who "confine" themselves within walls or behind fences are the only ones who experience fear in our cities marked by social inequality, or on the contrary whether it is also possible to identify fear in the working class sectors. This last option would be in accordance with the contradictory policies of the local power, which I have called as "schizopolicies". Additionally, I am interested in analyzing how villages, settlements and illegal squatters are perceived by the rest of the society as "usinas". "Usina" refers to an emergence of elements that provoke feelings of fear, uncertainty and disorder. In this article, we will see how culture and nature are covertly constructed from certain political projects as an antithesis to fear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]