Sian Lazar

The Social Life of Politics (eBook, ePUB)

Ethics, Kinship, and Union Activism in Argentina

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

A central motor of Argentine historical and political development since the early twentieth century, unions have been the site of active citizenship in both political participation and the distribution of social, economic, political, and cultural rights. What brings activists to Argentine unions and what gives these unions their remarkable strength?

The Social Life of Politics examines the intimate, personal, and family dimensions of two political activist groups: the Union of National Civil Servants (UPCN) and the Association of State Workers (ATE). These two unions represent distinct political orientations within Argentina's broad, vibrant labor movement: the UPCN identifies as predominantly Peronist, disciplined, and supportive of incumbent government, while the ATE prides itself on its democratic, horizontal approach and relative autonomy from the electoral process. Sian Lazar examines how activists in both unions create themselves as particular kinds of militants and forms of political community. The Social Life of Politics places the lived experience of political activism into historical relief and shows how ethics and family values deeply inform the process by which political actors are formed, understood, and joined together through collectivism.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 256
• Erscheinungstermin: 6. Juni 2017
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781503602427
• Artikelnr.: 49945972

Autorenporträt

Sian Lazar is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. She is the author of El Alto, Rebel City: Self and Citizenship in Andean Bolivia (2008), among other books.

Inhaltsangabe

Contents and Abstracts
Introduction
chapter abstract
The introduction presents the main argument and surveys the relevant
literature: of anthropology of social movements, class, ethics and kinship.
It then summarizes the structure of the book.
1The State and theUnions in Space and Time
chapter abstract
The chapter sets out the context within which the unionists work,
describing the organization of public sector unionism and some of the
differences between the two unions studied in the book. The unions are
called UPCN (Unión del Personal Civil de la Nación, Union of National Civil
Servants) and ATE (Asociación de Trabajadores del Estado, Association of
State Workers). The chapter then outlines some key moments in contemporary
history of state restructuring, which deeply affected public sector workers
and their unions and framed nearly all of the discussions about this
research with the unions. It introduces the various histories that run
throughout the chapters of this book, as they are entwined with personal
stories of militancy and shape projects of collective ethical
subjectivation and political action: histories of Peronism, of the labor
movement in Argentina more broadly, of dictatorship, of state
restructuring, and of neoliberalism.
2Militancia: An Ethics and Politics of the Self
chapter abstract
This chapter introduces the concept of militancia (activism), a philosophy
of political action and self-definition with an associated set of
historical resonances and claims about character. Union activists often
explained that they became activists because of what they considered to be
their essential being: they were that kind of character; they joined
because their parents had been unionists; political activity was a
biological necessity; an addiction or a virus. The chapter explores these
narratives of character as essence, and shows how militancy as subject
position is deeply ethical in that it has ethical consequences - for
activists' life course and for political action, because it shapes how they
strive for the good, how they are perceived from the outside. However,
outside of the research interview it is not often reflected upon. Rather,
it is a process of self-cultivation that just happens and for which they
are naturally pre-disposed.
3Family and Intergenerational Transmission of Militancia
chapter abstract
This chapter focuses on one of the dominant ways that people explained
their predisposition to activism, as something inherited from their
families. The character of political militant can be transmitted through
generations by stories, childhood experience, teaching and inherited
characteristics. It is not always an easy path, and does not always happen,
but family loomed large in many stories that activists told about their
militant trajectories. Again, this is an aspect of ethical subjectivation
that is considered to be part of one's essence, but it is more mutable than
the character essence narrated in the previous chapter, which might be
thought only to develop teleologically, by becoming stronger or weaker. In
contrast, family transmission of essential ethical characteristics is more
open to narration and thus to contingency, change and variation - as
siblings take very different attitudes towards politics, for example.
4Pedagogy and Political Community
chapter abstract
This chapter turns to explicit pedagogies of construction of individual
militants and the collective ethical subject of the union by examining the
ways that the two unions train newly elected delegates - by UPCN in the
school for unionists, and by ATE in a less formal workshop structure. The
chapter shows how the unions cultivate particular virtues among their
activists, principally associated with how they orient themselves to and
define the collectivity. This is a political community envisaged as
vertical (for UPCN) and horizontal (for ATE), a difference which indexes
the difference between political community as organism and as political
project. This collective subject, and the individual selves that comprise
it, is constructed through explicit exhortation, by appealing to
characteristics and virtues that are thought to already exist among the
delegates, drawing out their predisposition to rage against injustice or to
feel a vocation for social action, for example.
5Containment as Care
chapter abstract
This chapter introduces the concept of containment (contención), and
describes how members of a UPCN delegation in the Health Ministry enact
collectivity in their day to day life. Containment names ways that the
union delegation encompasses its activists and affiliates. This can be
through quasi-therapeutic relationships between activist and affiliate, as
the activist seeks to resolve workplace problems and to talk through
concerns from their life more broadly. But the main subject of this chapter
is encompassment through practices of sociability, care, ritual and
problem-solving. The local delegation is a space for processes of kinning,
of making people into kin and friends. This takes place as ethical values
of vocation, will, or desire for social justice circulate alongside talk,
food, and other shared concerns to build a shared collective subjectivity.
Kinship also shapes the conditions of possibility for action and care on
the part of the union.
6Containment as Political Encompassment
chapter abstract
This chapter examines containment as collective political action, which
provides activists with spaces for self-fulfilment and political
subject-hood. Through assemblies and street protests, unionists in both ATE
and UPCN act on themselves and on the world. They construct themselves as a
collective ethical subject and seek to transform the world for the better,
or prevent or mitigate its transformation for the worse. Both kinds of
political ethical action take place from a particular embodied and
spatialized subject position. They also involve a particular relation to
time, as each assembly or protest is part of a trajectory of action in
history that also builds history, as well as being an experience of
quotidian work which might only achieve very small but incremental
improvements. Finally, they are also events where collective subjectivation
takes place through the building of kinship as 'mutuality of being' in
moments of effervescence and shared effort.
Conclusion
chapter abstract
The conclusion summarizes the book's argument that, for the unionists,
activism is an ethical mode of existence that combines life experience and
action to transform society. The conclusion shows how the concepts of
hexis, praxis, and essence describe different ethical modes for the
unionists. Understandings of essential character or biological
predisposition interact with hexis - the cultivated state or disposition of
political activist - and then transform into praxis, or explicitly
theorized political action. The book has introduced these concepts in turn
as overlapping modes of subjectivation, and the conclusion ties together
this conceptual framework. The unions derive their strength and longevity
insofar as they are able to successfully achieve projects of collective
ethical-political subjectivation, as people become good activists and
contain each other within the group. Politics is grounded in the ethical
realms of the everyday, of the intimate, of shared values, and of the
family.