Toward a Political Sociology of Urban Marginality

This book has examined how violence dislocates individuals' lives and disrupts the collective life of Arquitecto Tucci. It has also identified economic and political forces at the root of the whirlpool of violence that wreaks havoc in Tucci's daily life. This conclusion summarizes the book's main findings and proposes a political sociology of urban marginality by highlighting parallels and convergences with other territories of urban relegation in the Americas. It argues that, to make better sense of concatenated violence—and the individual and collective actions it generates—it is necessary to pay attention to state actions and inactions, such as police brutality, police participation in crime (such as the drug trade), and the almost total (and patriarchal) institutional disregard for—and occasional complicity with—domestic and sexual violence.

The State at the Margins

This chapter examines the relationship between the state's presence at the urban margins and the depacification of poor people's daily lives in Arquitecto Tucci, focusing in particular on the role of the local police in the neighborhood and the way it partakes in the crime it is supposed to be controlling. It first considers the ways in which the local police see the area and its residents, showing that police agents understand the origins and character of violence as “cultural.” It then presents a series of vignettes to depict the particular presence of the repressive arm of the state in Arquitecto Tucci before discussing police brutality and the highly selective nature of law enforcement when it comes to incarceration of offenders. It argues that law enforcement in Arquitecto Tucci is intermittent, selective, and contradictory.

Born Amid Bullets

This chapter examines the concatenations of different types of violence that coexist in Arquitecto Tucci. It begins with a series of ethnographic descriptions of the different forms and uses of violence that sometimes overlap in the everyday life of local residents. It then considers the ways in which social science has approached the issue of interpersonal violence before engaging in a series of ethnographic reconstructions that depict the concatenations of different types of intentional perpetration of physical harm in Arquitecto Tucci. It shows that children and adolescents growing up in the neighborhood not only encounter criminal and police violence, but domestic and sexual violence also frequently put their lives in danger, either as victims or as witnesses. It also explains how violence acquires a form other than restricted reciprocity and is deployed not simply as a means of retaliation. Finally, it discusses the link between drugs and violence.

El Barrio and La Feria

This chapter discusses the extreme levels of material deprivation and the meager forms of palliative state assistance that characterize daily life in Arquitecto Tucci. It first reviews the neighborhood's recent history as one marked by deindustrialization and informalization before considering the formation and pacification of the informal street market known as La Salada (an important source of jobs for the local population) and the depacification of its surrounding area. In particular, it examines the role played by violence in the origins of La Salada, as well as the ways in which the daily functioning of the market has become more “civilized” (that is, devoid of violence) over time. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the increasing levels of interpersonal violence in the area adjacent to La Salada, which it ascribes to expanding opportunities for crime.

Introduction

This book focuses on the collective trauma created by the constant and implacable interpersonal violence in Arquitecto Tucci, a marginalized neighborhood in the outskirts of the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina. It examines the hows and whys of the copresence and concatenations of different forms of violence that encircle the lives of the urban poor in the community. It considers the ways in which scared residents—men and women, adults and children—establish routines and weave relations to cope with (and respond to) the constant danger that besieges them and their beloved ones by exercising what anthropologists Veena Das and Michael Lambek call “ordinary ethics.” This introduction provides an overview of violence in urban areas in Latin America, the book's ethnographic reconstruction of violence at the urban margins, the research method used, and the chapters that follow.

Ethics and Politics Amid Violence

This chapter examines the ethical and political dimensions of violence by looking at the practices and routines that Arquitecto Tucci residents engage in to protect themselves and their loved ones. It considers the routines, akin to “making toast,” that the people of Tucci deploy to deal with surrounding danger. It argues that these routine and nonroutine practices, including those that involve the deployment of violence, can be understood as the expression of “ordinary ethics,” revealing an ethics of care at work. It concludes with a discussion of a peaceful form of collective action that is slowly emerging in Tucci to tackle the issue of public safety as well as the character of this incipient social movement.