Beyond Precarity: Collective Practices and Political Subjectivities from Argentina’s Popular Economy

This article is based on an ongoing ethnographic research project with cooperatives of street vendors that are part of the Confederation of Workers of Popular Economy (CTEP), a recently formed union in Argentina whose objective is to represent workers of the “popular economy”. This research project...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Álvarez, María Inés Fernández
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2018
País:Ecuador
Institución:Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales
Repositorio:Revista ICONOS
Idioma:español
OAI Identifier:oai:iconos.flacsoandes.edu.ec:article/3243
Acceso en línea:https://iconos.flacsoandes.edu.ec/index.php/iconos/article/view/3243
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Economia popular
organização coletiva
trabalho
precariedade
experiência
subjetividade
Argentina
Economía popular
organización colectiva
trabajo
precariedad
experiencia
subjetividad
Popular economy
collective organizing
work
precarity
experience
subjectivity
Descripción
Sumario:This article is based on an ongoing ethnographic research project with cooperatives of street vendors that are part of the Confederation of Workers of Popular Economy (CTEP), a recently formed union in Argentina whose objective is to represent workers of the “popular economy”. This research project aims to contribute to studies about the ways in which the so called “popular sectors” develop creative practices from their precarious positions to deal with the production and reproduction of life. In this work an analysis is done on the way in which this experience of precarity enabled a process of collective construction that connects a living past, anchored in subjective experiences, with a future that projects this experience in political terms in the form of a union. This article asserts that this process of collective construction creates tension between classical work divisions, such as formal/informal, salaried employee/non-salaried employee, worker movements/social movements, to the extent that wage earning work operates as a platform from which subjectivities are projected, less as material to be transformed and more as a foundation for generating collective rights.