Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2022
Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a shantytown in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, this article studies the workings of Peronist “political clientelism” among the urban poor. It analyzes the web of relations that some slum-dwellers establish with local political brokers to obtain medicine, food, and solutions to other everyday concerns. The article also explores the main functions of the “problem-solving networks,” which are resource control and information hoarding, and pays particular attention to an underexplored dimension of the operation of clientelism: clients' own views on the network.
This research was funded by a grant from the Joint Committee on Latin American and Caribbean Studies of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies with funds provided by the Ford Foundation. I would like to thank Charles Tilly, Deborah Poole, Robert Gay, and Steve Levitsky for their critical comments on earlier versions. Drafts were presented at the Colloquium on Argentine Political Culture at the University of Illinois, Urbana, and the Seminario General at the Casa de Altos Estudios and the Fundación Banco Patricios in Argentina. I would like to thank Tulio Halperin, Jose Nun, and the participants in those forums for their insightful criticisms and encouragement. Parts of this essay were adapted from my forthcoming book, The Politics of Survival: Networks and Culture among the Argentine Urban Poor (to be published by DukeUniversity Press).