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Based an ethnographic study on the periphery of the largest and most important irrigated area in central-western Argentina, this paper analyzes the role of persistent ethno-racial and environmental representations that delineate irrigated areas and social groups that possess water and land. The groups located on either side of the most distant irrigation canals are interpellated from modernist paradigms that link water rights, private property, and wine production to European heritage and the idea of progress, while in the non-irrigated area, communal land ownership and pastoralism is associated with indigenous groups of Huarpe descent and the idea of backwardness or regression. Given the fact that both groups are represented as supposedly independent, opposed and separated by the last irrigation canals, this article conceptualizes the latter as an irrigated border. This border, despite being regarded as natural and fixed, is on the contrary artificial and dynamic. It is the product of social and symbolic struggles for water and legitimacy as the socio-cultural group capable of obtaining and controlling water. In this way, not only is the presence of liminal actors who are neither of Huarpe nor European origin highlighted, but also alliances that may lead to the reconfiguration of irrigated areas and sociocultural groups capable of fighting in disputes over natural resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

This article investigates different forms of registry of the Mapuche concept in both Chile and Argentina after indigenous territories of Araucania and Patagonia were conquered, by late XIX century. A hypothesis is suggested concerning a difference in this registry, based on what was -within these contexts- the destination of Mapuche bodies on the one hand and of papers and documents created and accumulated by these populations before being included into both Sates sovereignties, on the other. We can see that in Argentina, bodies museographical inscription was privileged and, at the same time there was a document archives inscription which made Mapuche an historiographical and anthropological past element and lacking political validity at present. While in Chile, there is a population inscription of Mapuche bodies related to a kind of mestizo and state ideology through which the Mapuche concept got a kind of racial validity. This is how the idea of "reducto" arose as a category through which ambivalences from both types of inscription are analyzed so that the Mapuche concept has worked as a patrimonial capital of national sovereignty (associated to identity and autochthonousness) or, on the contrary as just the rest of a life or indigenous culture that persists and is managed in the political and historical limits of this same national sovereignty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on textile production in the Central Plateau of the Province of Chubut (Patagonia Argentina). This kind of textile production is similar to the one practiced by the ancient inhabitants of the Patagonia region, which is described in historic documents of the 16th Century. Using a combination of ethnographic and historical research methods, I study the main characteristics of current textile production in the Patagonia region, and how these are firmly rooted in the past. In this paper I discuss the technical and instrumental details of textile production, how it is transmitted through generations, and its importance for the economy of the families who practice it, both in the present and in the past. I also examine how identity is created in the process of textile production. I adopt a structuralist perspective on the analysis of textile production, and I depart from a primordialist and static concept of culture. [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]

This paper analyzes the social and urban changes occurring in a neighborhood in the South Sector of Buenos Aires (Parque de los Patricios). The changes are connected to the construction of a housing complex by a cooperative established though a social political movement of unemployed workers. We explore the struggles for the control of the local urban space, between this political movement and the neighbors who were already living in the neighborhood. We describe the transformation of this urban space from empty space to a resource. We relate such changes to others that have been developing in the city of Buenos Aires during the last decade of the 20th century, such as increased segregation and fragmentation of the social space and the weakening of existing social ties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the social and environmental space used by the Antofagasta de la Sierra community in the province of Catamarca, Argentina. It considers the social units of production, animal populations, available pastures and the patterns of use and possession of the land. It aims to identify and evaluate patterns regarding the use of space and the natural environment and discusses the official incentives for economic development for this sector of the Meridional Puna, Argentina. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social anthropology alows us to have a good look at the most recent urban transformations which took place in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires. More specifically, we concentrate our attention on the urban renewal process which takes place in the suburban areas of this city. This urban regeneration process is connected with the sub-urbanization or peri-urbanization of middle / upper class groups in residential neighborhoods with security systems. Focusing on the process of growing and development of these "gated communities", this paper explores one of the most recent urban changes which are clearly seen in contemporary cities. We elaborate some statements about the phenomena under discussion based on a fieldwork experience carried out among residents of these particular residential products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]