Contentious Lives: Two Argentine Women, Two Protests, and the Quest for Recognition

by Javier Auyero

Contentious Lives examines the ways popular protests are experienced and remembered, individually and collectively, by those who participate in them. Javier Auyero focuses on the roles of two young women, Nana and Laura, in uprisings in Argentina (the two-day protest in the northwestern city of Santiago del Estero in 1993 and the six-day road blockade in the southern oil towns of Cutral-co and Plaza Huincul in 1996) and the roles of the protests in their lives. Laura was the spokesperson of the picketers in Cutral-co and Plaza Huincul; Nana was an activist in the 1993 protests. In addition to exploring the effects of these episodes on their lives, Auyero considers how each woman's experiences shaped what she said and did during the uprisings, and later, the ways she recalled the events. While the protests were responses to the consequences of political corruption and structural adjustment policies, they were also, as Nana’s and Laura’s stories reveal, quests for recognition, respect, and dignity. Auyero reconstructs Nana’s and Laura’s biographies through oral histories and diaries. Drawing on interviews with many other protesters, newspaper articles, judicial records, government reports, and video footage, he provides sociological and historical context for their stories. The women’s accounts reveal the frustrations of lives overwhelmed by gender domination, the deprivations brought about by hyper-unemployment and the withering of the welfare component of the state, and the achievements and costs of collective action. Balancing attention to large-scale political and economic processes with acknowledgment of the plurality of meanings emanating from personal experiences, Contentious Lives is an insightful, penetrating, and timely contribution to discussions of popular resistance and the combined effects of globalization, neoliberal economic policies, and political corruption in Argentina and elsewhere.

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[Gabriel · Rating 4 out of 5]

interesting all together, page turning and great attention to details!

[Julio César · Rating 4 out of 5]

Auyero does it again. In this case, the story is about two argentine women who participated in two of the most prominent contentious episodes of the 1990's in our country: namely, the Santiagazo and the pueblada. Challenging, but not absolutely denying, those who say that these riots were originated by the lack of payment and the devastation that the neoliberal economical recipes meant, the author stresses the deeper meanings that the episodes had in both of these women's lives: how important it was, he says, for them to feel "respected" and "recognized", at least once in their lives.

[Draco3seven Crawdady · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought it was scientifically surfacie... Its important case work on important topic... so its worth reading from that perspective... but kinda of a lame straight shooter ethnography.