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Argentina is the most sued country in the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) and one of the most Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) signed (58 in total, 55 into force). Most of these lawsuits were filed by transnational corporations (TNCs) by the 2001-2002 crisis and linked to economic sectors related to natural resources. 20% of these claims are related to the drinking water and sanitation, which also makes Argentina in the country that has received claims in ICSID this sector. These are cases of social conflict and where the role of the state is evident as a regulator against the claim of protection of private property by TNCs, which highlights a legal asymmetry that favors the protection of investments on the protection of rights humans, particularly the human right to water recognized by the UN in 2010. Taking the Argentine case as a witness, this paper will present an asymmetry that violates the most basic foundations of international law, highlighting the need to revise the international investment protection regime and its relevance to the human rights obligations erga omnes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyze how professionals of palliative care -a branch of medicine specialized in the care of dying patients- define, plan and disclose the "terminal" status of patients with advanced cancer diseases. The article is based on ethnographic observations and interviews with professionals in a palliative care service in the Buenos Aires city. The paper analyzes the tasks of definition and projection of the dying process and the way professionals disclose information about the dying prognosis. The analysis of these practices shows how the "end of life" is constructed in two ways: as a stage of psychological preparation for patients and families (and therefore an object of professional intervention), and as gradual process culminating in death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we intend to address an analysis of the publication of domestic violence and femicide cases, through a survey conducted with four Argentine newspapers during the first half of 2012. We are interested in enquiring who the privileged representatives by the media are when reporting on the phenomenon, in order to distinguish the space of enunciation that the press gives to diverse actors. Through the analysis of the stories of aggressors, family, justice and victims, we intend to observe the diverse positions and the arguments involved and elucidate who has a louder voice in defining and fixing the interpretations of femicide and gender violence. Based on this, we seek to catch a sight of the reduced space women take up in a sea of voices in counterpoint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The knowledge society, as an engine of economic and social development, is present in the minds of academics, entrepreneurs and government officials. This implies that globally there is a need for the academy to contribute with the productive sector and for the State to support this integration. This paper tries to reveal the perceptions of members of the academy, the enterprises and the Argentinian State on the scope of this triangulation; which means the relationship between the three vertex: the scientific and technological system, the productive system and the governmental system to cooperate in conjunction. It also seeks to expose its position on the alleged commodification of knowledge and the state's role as an intermediary and provider of scientific policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the past decade discussions about the way in which the development of technologies can (or should) promote social inclusion processes have been revived in the academic debate, in some cases these have also been reflected in the design and implementation of public policies. However, among the groups of R & D engaged in activities of technological development and extension the deterministic approaches and adherence to the technology transfer models persist and, therefore, they often fail to generate processes of inclusion and sustainable empowerment in time. The main objective of this paper is to make a first analysis of the learnings generated when R & D groups face problems and meanings outside their knowledge production frameworks and the way this enables new forms of negotiation of knowledge and technology, also identifying possible limitations of these processes. To this end, we analyze two experiences of developing technologies for social inclusion in Argentina in the areas of social housing and renewable energy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an analysis of the links between national identity and technoscience. To do this, we will study the meanings of nation that are developed on two ceremonies commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of institutions dedicated to the production of science and technology in France and Argentina: the headquarters of the Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique in Grenoble and Instituto Balseiro, a training center of the National Atomic Energy Commission in Bariloche. We will show how the meanings of nation activate and justify speeches and practices associated with technoscientific production focusing on the resources through which technoscience is incorporated into every celebration. The proposal is framed within ethnographic research including among its methods, the development of in-depth interviews and participant observation of daily situations or beyond daily situations from a comparative perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we intend to show that security and efficiency in the production of energy from nuclear power stations is an important discursive component which is mounted on a scientific truth built by experts on nuclear energy. In the article we will attempt to show the joints and linkages in the arena of social power of a discourse produced by experts that legitimates nuclear power generation. Based on analysis of newspaper articles, scientific papers and the corporate site of the National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA), we aim to expose the construction of this discourse in Argentina. Thus, we assume that the truth is the product of struggles and conflicts within specific power relations-definition (Beck, 2008) and conclude that a nuclear lobby has achieved an effective staging that excludes risks and that links the economic efficiency of this industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines some of the relationships between the ethnographic experience and knowledge that has been deployed on the ethnicity of the Great Chaco region in the first decade of the XXIst century in the argentinian anthropology. Considering that it is through "the lived experience" in the field that knowledge is produced, there are two conditions as interpretive focus: the condition of displacement, otherness and space condition. It is argued that each of these conditions suggest to the recent ethnography of Gran Chaco, as field of experiences and practices that are temporarily, politically and historically located in relation to configurations, anthropological trajectories and subjectivities, whose heterogeneity is intertwined with the particularity of each lived experience in "the ethnographic field". The Cartesian dual dimension of the field work is questionned and the article shows how the epistemological dispute, by the Chaco ethnic alterity, is ascribed to specific forms of knowledge of the national anthropological academy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how processes of social mobilization and property parceling framed in the Agrarian Reform National Plan --involving an ample sector of tenant farm laborers in an Andean Nariño large estate between 1958 and 1963-- appear, nearly five decades later, as objects of moral interpretation and appraisal. It analyzes the significance assigned in accounts to the agency of actors involved (peasants, landlords and state); variations in such assigning are connected to the moral frameworks they call on to interpret their past; and their origin is traced back on the various subalternization experiences they faced. I suggest that, when turning out to different sources of moral appraisal, the existence of manifold subjectivation forms makes itself evident depending on their relations to different forms of authority (landlords, church, state), and that they come with various alternative standings face to their past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses popular wisdom and memory transmission regarding State terrorism and forced disappearance, which are circulating among youth living around Hospital Posadas, located in Haedo, a province to Buenos Aires, Argentina. At this hospital, there was, under the military dictatorship (1976-1983), a Clandestine Imprisonment Center, where people were kept prisoner as disappeared. Therefore, at this facility both practices of health restoration and torture and murder perpetration coexisted. Through thirty indepth interviews carried out among neighbor young people, the existence of manifold knowledge fractures and memory transmission about State violence is verified, being a result from the social relations breakthrough that used to articulate the neighborhood and the hospital, and from the material life conditions promoting undifferentiated historical and political time awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the discourse conflicts concerning development and the social issue, between the government elites and the power groups during post-Peronist developmentalism era in Argentina. Because of space limitations emphasis will be made on the Onganía's government. Governmentality crisis faced during that period can be explained on the grounds of the difficulty elites in power had to come to an agreement on a hegemonic discourse concerning those issues, as it is argued here. The empirical analysis will show a constant: permanence in time of a liberal narrative against any effort of state regulation and the failed attempt to create an alternative narrative through the development significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From an ethnographic perspective, this paper will focus on analyzing how «cirujas» --as people collecting reusable materials from waste are-- are readapting themselves to the current urban space in the city of Buenos Aires (Argentina), and how they confront stigmatizing social discourses. An account of theses uses and the strategies they formulate to face social differentiation they use to live with, to resist or coexist with stigmatizing stereotypes condemning them is provided. At the same time, by focusing on urban spaces with interacting groups from different socio-economic sectors, the idea of social segregation will be challenged, by showing these processes come along with new encounter modalities between the different social groups based on the realization of a differentiated use of public space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]