Routine Politics and Violence in Argentina The Gray Zone of State Power [Hardcover]

This book scrutinizes the series of food riots in Argentina in December 2001.This book scrutinizes the series of food riots in Argentina in December 2001. It pays particular attention to the secret relationships among looters, political activists, and police forces. These clandestine relationships constitute the gray zone of politics.This book scrutinizes the series of food riots in Argentina in December 2001. It pays particular attention to the secret relationships among looters, political activists, and police forces. These clandestine relationships constitute the gray zone of politics.Close to three hundred stores and supermarkets were looted during week-long food riots in Argentina in December 2001. Thirty-four people were reported dead and hundreds were injured. Among the looting crowds, activists from the Peronist party (the main political party in the country) were quite prominent. During the lootings, police officers were conspicuously absent - particularly when small stores were sacked. Through a combination of archival research, statistical analysis, multi-sited fieldwork, and taking heed of the perspective of contentious politics, this book provides an analytic description of the origins, course, meanings, and outcomes of the December 2001 wave of lootings in Argentina.1. The gray zone; 2. Party politics and everyday life; 3. Food lootings; 4. Moreno and La Matanza lootings; 5. Making sense of collective violence. This fascinating study of the Argentine food riots of December 2001 that brought down an elected president makes an important contribution to our understanding of contentious politics and to socio-political life more generally through its illumination of the understudied grey zone where clandestine connections blur distinctions between everyday life, routine politics and collective violence. Auyeros case study is well written and finely drawn, based on numerous interviews backed by a quantitative analysis for all relevant reported events. EsplÍ