Javier Auyero

Lozano Long Professor of Latin American Sociology. Sociology Department. University of Texas, Austin

UT-Sociology

2501 University

Burdine Hall, Room 564

Austin, TX 78712

auyero@austin.utexas.edu

Javier's research and writing focuses on political ethnography, urban poverty in Latin America, and contentious collective action. Together with Debora Swistun, he recently finished a book entitled "Flammable. Environmental Suffering in an Argentine Shantytown" to be published by Oxford University Press in April 2009. His current project, "a tempography of domination" examines the different ways in which the urban poor experience time and waiting.

Javier is the current editor of Qualitative Sociology and a founding member of Apuntes de Investigación.CV

Recent books

2009. With Debora Swistun. Flammable. Environmental Suffering in an Argentine Shantytown. New York. Oxford University Press.

Surrounded by a large petrochemical compound, a polluted river, a hazardous waste incinerator, and an unmonitored landfill, Flammable suffers from rampant contamination of its soil, air, and water. Strikingly, the nearly five thousand sickened and frail inhabitants doubt or even deny the harmful impact of pollution on their lives. Why do they fail to understand what is objectively a clear and present danger? Drawing upon archival research and over two years of fieldwork, Javier Auyero and Flammable resident Débora Alejandra Swistun explore the lived experiences of environmental suffering. The “toxic uncertainty,” the authors hold, is shaped by conflicting political and economic forces and by the routine struggle for survival. Combining social analysis with vivid descriptions of everyday life, this book places the environment at the center of the study of urban marginality, describing the effects of contamination and explaining the puzzling and contradictory meanings its residents ascribe to it.

Advance praise for Flammable

“The authors have accomplished an astounding analysis of the destruction—physical and psychological—of a people living in poverty, their world dominated by a multinational corporate giant whose toxic waste pollutes their everyday lives. This superb and moving political ethnography captures the meanings of contamination to the residents, who live in disaster—immobilized by the toxic uncertainty, powerless confusion, and mistake that ultimately normalize risk and danger.”—Diane Vaughan, author of The Challenger Launch Decision

“In this stunning book, Auyero and Swistun dissect the ‘slow-motion human and environmental disaster’ wrought by the noxious mix of economic dispossession and extreme pollution in a slum of Buenos Aires. By disclosing how residents experience ‘toxic uncertainty’ in everyday life, they show why this poisonous habitat not only assaults their individual bodies, but also ravages their social defenses and cultural immunity. With its deft integration of fieldwork, social theory, and narrative, Flammable is a signal contribution that will be widely discussed, often emulated, but not surpassed for a long time to come.”—Loïc Wacquant, author of Urban Outcasts

“This brilliant ethnography of a polluted shantytown opens a new theoretical and topical frontier for urban poverty studies. The authors show how impoverished, poisoned residents, compelled to scramble for their daily economic survival in the context of larger political economic forces, are buffeted by competing discourses of agents of the state and civil society. They become trapped in a misrecognized toxic environment that imposes tremendous and ongoing physical suffering, psychic anxiety, and paralyzing uncertainty on them.”—Philippe Bourgois, author of In Search of Respect

2008. With Debora Swistun. Inflamable. Estudio del Sufrimiento Ambiental. Buenos Aires: Paidos.

(Leer Introducción)

2007. Routine Politics and Collective Violence in Argentina: The Gray Zone of State Power. New York: Cambridge University Press. (Spanish translation: La Zona Gris. Violencia Colectiva y Política Partidaria en la Argentina Contemporánea. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI).

2007. With Lauren Joseph and Matthew Mahler (editors). New Perspectives in Political Ethnography. New York: Springer.

Recent papers

With Fernanda Page and Pablo Lapegna, "Patronage Politics and Contentious Collective Action: A Recursive Relationship." Working paper.

With Debora Swistun, "Tiresias in Flammable Shantytown: Towards a Tempography of Domination." Sociological Forum, Forthcoming.

With Debora Swistun, "The Social Production of Toxic Uncertainty." American Sociological Review, 73 (3):357-379.

With Deborah Swistun, "Amidst Garbage and Poison: An Essay on Polluted Peoples and Places." Contexts. 6(2): 46-51, 2007
With Timothy Moran, "The Dynamics of Collective Violence: Dissecting Food Riots in Contemporary Argentina." Social Forces 85(3): 1341-1367, 2007.
With Debora Swistun, "Exposed and Confused. Towards an Ethnography of Environmental Suffering." Ethnography 8(2): 123-144.
"On Domination and Inequality: The Case of Patronage Politics in Contemporary Argentina" Iberoamericana. Nordic Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 36(2):159-174, 2006.
"The Political Makings of the 2001 Lootings in Argentina." Journal of Latin American Studies 38/2:241-265, 2006
"Spaces and Places as Sites and Objects of Politics." In Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis. Robert Goodin and Charles Tilly, editors. Oxford University Press, 2006.
"Protest and Politics in Contemporary Argentina." In Argentine Democracy. The Politics of Institutional Weakness. Steven Levitsky and Maria Victoria Murillo, editors. Penn State University Press, 2005.
"Protest in Contemporary Argentina. A Contentious Repertoire in the Making." In Out of the Shadows: Political Action and the Informal Economy in Latin America. Patricia Fernández-Kelly and Jon Shefner, editors. Penn State University Press, 2005.
"El Oficio de la Etnografía Política." Interview published in ICONOS, May 2005
"The Moral Politics of the Argentine Crowds." Mobilization 9/3:311-327, 2004
"When Everyday Life, Routine Politics, and Protest Meet," Theory and Society, 33:417-441, 2004.

La Boca Bus, 2006.

Graduate Courses

SOC 591 (Fall 2006) Social Suffering; SOC 509 (Fall 2004) The Practice of Ethnography; SOC 595 (Spring 2002) Culture, Identity and Practice

Public Sociology in Home Country

"Un intelectual que no comprende lo que pasa en su tiempo y en su pais es una contradicción andante, y el que comprendiendo no actúa, tendra un lugar en la antología del llanto, no en la historia viva de su tierra". Rodolfo Walsh.

El estado extorsionador.Página12. 19 de Diciembre, 2008.

El síndrome del sufrimiento ambiental. Crítica. 14 de Julio, 2008.

Los saqueos de 2001 no fueron una conspiración. Página12. 25 de Noviembre, 2007.

En el diario hablan de ti. Página12. 21 de Marzo, 2007.

En los estudios de pobreza, el medio ambiente está rezagado. Página12. 24 de Julio, 2006.

Buscan cuestionar los planes. Página12. 13 de Septiembre, 2005.

Los límites reales del clientelismo. Página12. 8 de Agosto, 2004.

Elogio del piquete. Página12. 27 de Noviembre, 2003.

Clientelismo político: Un etnógrafo en la villa. Clarín. 26 de Agosto, 2001.

BOOKS

2003 Contentious Lives. Two Argentine Women, Two Protests, and the Quest for Recognition. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

2002 La Protesta. Retratos de la beligerancia popular en la Argentina democrática. Buenos Aires: Centro Cultural Rojas, Serie Extramuros.

2001 Poor People's Politics. Peronist Networks and the Legacy of Evita. Durham, NC: Duke University Press [Spanish translation: La política de los pobres. Las prácticas clientelistas del peronismo. Buenos Aires: Manantial].

1999 (Editor) Caja de Herramientas. El lugar de la cultura en la sociología norteamericana. Buenos Aires: Universidad de Quilmes

1997 (Editor) ¿Favores por votos? Estudios sobre clientelismo político. Buenos Aires: Losada.

ARTICLES BY SUBJECT

CLIENTELISM AND POLITICAL CULTURE

"Clientelismo político: Doble vida y negación colectiva," in Perfiles Latinoamericanos (Mexico) 20 (June) pp. 33-52, 2002.

"The Logic of Clientelism in Argentina: An Ethnographic Account" Latin American Research Review Vol.36, No.1, pp.55-81, 2000.

"Cultura política, destitución social y clientelismo político en Buenos Aires. Un estudio etnográfico" in Maristella Svampa (ed.) Desde abajo. La transformación de las identidades sociales. (Buenos Aires: Biblos), pp.181-208, 2000.

"From the Client's Point(s) of View. How do Poor People Perceive and Evaluate Political Clientelism," Theory and Society 28, pp.297-334, 1999.

"Re-Membering Peronism: An Ethnographic Account of the Relational Character of Political Memory," Qualitative Sociology Vol.22, No.4, pp. 331-351, 1999.

"Performing Evita. A Tale of Two Peronist Women," Journal of Contemporary Ethnography. Vol.27 No.4, January, pp. 461-493, 1999.

URBAN POVERTY AND INEQUALITY

--with Hobert, Rodrigo;"Y esto es Buenos Aires? Los contrastes del proceso de urbanizacion", in Nueva Historia Argentina: Violencia, proscripcion y autoritarismo 1955-1976, Daniel James (Editor), (Buenos Aires, Sudamericana, 2003), pp. 213-244.

"'We are Cursed.' Shantytown's Lives in Contemporary Argentina," in The Argentina Reader, G. Nouzeilles and G. Montaldo, (Duke University Press, 2002) pp.509-519.

"Introducción. Claves para pensar la marginación" in Loïc Wacquant, Parias Urbanos. Marginalidad en la ciudad a comienzos del milenio. (Buenos Aires: Manantial, 2001), pp.1-23.

"The Hypershantytown. Ethnographic Portraits of Neo-liberal Violence(s)" Ethnography Vol.1, No.1, pp.93-116, 1999.

"This is Like the Bronx, isn't it? Lived Experiences of Slum-dwellers in Argentina," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research Vol.23 No.1, pp. 45-69, 1999.

"La Nueva Vanguardia de los Pobres. Notas sobre los intelectuales orgánicos del Banco Mundial," Apuntes de Investigación en Cultura y Política 4:91-8, 1999.

CONTENTIOUS COLLECTIVE ACTION

"What Are They Shouting About? The Means and Meanings of Popular Protest in Contemporary Argentina" in The Argentine Crisis at the Turn of the Millennium. Causes, Consequences, and Explanations. Flavia Fiorucci and Marcus Klein (Editors). Amsterdam: Aksant Academic Publishers, 2004. (Spanish Version: ¿Por qué esta gente? Los medios y significados de la protesta popular en la Argentina de hoy." América Latina Hoy. Revista de Ciencias Sociales 36. Universidad de Salamanca: 161-185, 2004).

"Política, Dominación y Desigualdad en la Argentina Contemporánea." Nueva Sociedad 193, pp. 133 - 145, 2004.

"The Geography of Popular Contention: An Urban Protest in Argentina," Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies Vol. 28, No. 55-6, pp. 37-70, 2003.

"Relational Riot," Social Movement Studies Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 117-145, 2003.

"The Judge, the Cop, and the Queen of Carnival: Ethnography, Storytelling, and the (Contested) Meanings of Protest," Theory and Society Vol. 31, No. 2, pp.153-89, 2002.

"El Santiagazo, Argentina 1993. Etnografía, narrativa y los sentidos de la protesta," in Revista Venezolana de Economía y Ciencias Sociales Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 33-56, 2002.

"Fuego, carpas y barricadas. Retratos de la beligerancia popular en la Argentina democrática," in Nueva Sociedad (Venezuela) 179 (May-June), 2002.

"La vida en un piquete. Biografía y protesta en el sur argentino," Apuntes de Investigación en Cultura y Política 8, 2002.

"Glocal Riots," International Sociology 16:1, January 2001.

"Los Estallidos En Provincia: Globalización y Conflictos Sociales" Punto De Vista 67, pp. 41-48, 2000.

Villa Inflamable, Buenos Aires, Julio 2006.

Javier Auyero Lozano Long Professor of Latin American Sociology. Sociology Department. University of Texas, Austin UT-Sociology 2501 University Burdine Hall, Room 564 Austin, TX 78712 auyero@austin.utexas.edu

Javier Auyero

Lozano Long Professor of Latin American Sociology. Sociology Department. University of Texas, Austin

UT-Sociology

2501 University

Burdine Hall, Room 564

Austin, TX 78712

auyero@austin.utexas.edu