A01=Javier Auyero
A01=Sofia Servian
Author_Javier Auyero
Author_Sofia Servian
Buenos Aires
Category=JBSD
Category=JHMC
clientelism
collective action
contentious collective action
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethnographic reconstruction
ethnography
exploitative jobs
informal networks
interpersonal violence
marginality
patronage politics
persistence
politics
reciprocity networks
subsistence strategies
survival strategies
urban poor
victims and perpetrators
violence
Product details
- ISBN 9781478031505
- Weight: 445g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 31 Mar 2025
- Publisher: Duke University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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In Squatter Life, sociologist Javier Auyero and anthropologist SofÍa ServiÁn detail the diverse and often precarious strategies that Argentina’s urban poor rely on to survive. Blending three years of ethnographic fieldwork and anthropological theory with personal narratives of ServiÁn’s experience growing up and living in a squatter settlement, the authors examine how Argentina’s squatter communities contend with violence and secure necessities like food, land, and housing despite inadequate state support and protection. Auyero and ServiÁn recount the bricolage of tactics these individuals employ to make ends meet, such as relying on highly exploitative jobs, patronage, and networks of reciprocal exchange that can involve illicit activities. Analyzing how these survival strategies intersect with class, gender, and political domination, the authors present a nuanced account of marginality in Argentinian squatter settlements while maintaining a deeply human portrait of survival and persistence.
Javier Auyero is Lozano Long Professor in Latin American Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin and Ikerbasque Research Professor at the University of the Basque Country, Bilbao. He is the author of Patients of the State: The Politics of Waiting in Argentina, Contentious Lives: Two Argentine Women, Two Protests, and the Quest for Recognition, and Poor People’s Politics: Peronist Survival Networks and the Legacy of Evita, all also published by Duke University Press.
SofÍa ServiÁn is a BA (Licenciatura) student of anthropology at the University of Buenos Aires.
SofÍa ServiÁn is a BA (Licenciatura) student of anthropology at the University of Buenos Aires.
