Violence has become a structuring component of the peripheral neighborhoods of Buenos Aires. A book depicts the daily life of the poor inhabitants of the Argentine capital, revealing the logic of a socialization to violence that particularly affects young people. A dive into the “decivilization” of morals.
Revised and expanded version of a more general work published in Spanish (Auyero and Fernanda Berti 2013), In Harm’s Way is the successful product of the ethnographic collaboration of María Fernanda Berti, a teacher in an elementary school in a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, and Javier Auyero, a professor of sociology at the University of Austin in Texas. Served by a sober and effective writing, which never gives in to the temptation to stage its authors, the work draws on rich and varied empirical material to offer an ambitious analysis of the causes and forms of violence that structure the daily lives of the inhabitants of the “urban margins” (urban margins) of the Argentine capital, but also the way in which they face or contribute to it.
As the title of the book indicates, the inhabitants of “Arquitecto Tucci” find themselves in fact “dangerous” (in harm’s way). The homicide rate, up 180% between 2007 and 2012, is 4 times higher than for the entire province of Buenos Aires. It was the centrality of violence in the stories of Mr. Berti’s students that led to “reorienting” (p. 186) the field study, which was initially intended to replicate a study of “environmental suffering” carried out near a petrochemical complex (Auyero and Swistun 2009), but this time in a context where the source of pollution is less visible (in this case the Riachuelo, a highly polluted river that defines the southern border of Buenos Aires). Just a few weeks after the start of the fieldwork, the elementary school students had already reported so many stories of murders, rapes, shootings, and domestic violence that the authors decided to shift the focus of their research.
The latter assume the dual objective of their approach, both scientific and political: it is a question of producing a scientific analysis of the experience of violence, but also of describing these experiences to make them visible, in a context where the discourses on urban insecurity (insecurity) are produced and manipulated by members of the middle and upper classes. Driven by a common sense of “urgency” (p. xii, preface), J. Auyero and M. Berti want to show that it is above all the inhabitants of poor neighborhoods who “live in insecurity” (ibid.).
An ethnographic team work
The neighbourhood studied is located in the south of Buenos Aires, in the municipality of Lomas de Zamora, which, like many municipalities close to the capital, welcomed a significant number of migrants from the interior at the time of the industrialisation of the country, particularly from the 1930s. Until then mainly used for recreational purposes (natural swimming pools, thermal spas), this vast moorland constituted an important reservoir of available space for the construction of new factories (metallurgy, meat packaging, textiles) but also of housing for this new urban proletariat, which in many cases practiced self-construction. Already well underway in the mid-1970s and then intensified at the turn of the 1990s as part of the country’s “great neoliberal transformation” (p. 43), Argentina’s deindustrialization process and the increasing informalization of its labor market have since left their mark: it is now mainly the informal market that provides work, particularly in the construction, personal services, and garbage collection sectors. La Salada, the country’s largest informal market (around 50,000 buyers per day and between 20 and 30,000 vendors), also contributes to the livelihoods of many residents of Arquitecto Tucci.
The authors distinguish three urban forms in this space where a significant part of the population survives on a combination of informal employment and public assistance: a traditional working-class neighborhood, more recent shantytowns, and squats in flood-prone areas near the Riachuelo. In the latter two cases, the legal security of housing is far from assured, and the material living conditions are harsh (unpaved streets, broken sidewalks, faulty lighting, random garbage collection). While the State is not totally absent (there is a public hospital, a first aid unit, public schools, and a number of assistance programs for the population), the three elementary schools where Mr. Berti taught are in an advanced state of disrepair. According to his calculations, students there receive an average of only 100 minutes of actual class time per day, and they never attended a full week of classes in 2009, due to serious security problems with the buildings and recurring strikes by teachers and staff seeking better working conditions.
It is in this context that the authors conducted fieldwork as a team for 30 months between 2009 and 2012. The book is based on Mr. Berti’s daily field notes; on in-depth interviews conducted with various local actors (residents, doctors from the hospital and health center, police officers and school staff members); on group interviews organized with high school students from the neighborhood; on photography workshops organized for primary school students; on around a hundred short interviews conducted with residents; and finally on intensive participant observation work conducted for six months by a research assistant, Agustin Burbano de Lara. Aware of the original nature of this device with regard to the methodological canons of urban ethnography, which tends to favor the long-term immersion of a single investigator, the authors emphasize that it allows the collection of empirical materials from different sources at the same time, which proves valuable for reconstructing the different sequences of a violent episode.
The dynamics of violence
The authors seek to grasp the causal relationships between the increase in violence at the local level and certain structural processes such as the informalization of the labor market, illegal state action, and increasing economic inequality. They first offer a stimulating analysis of how the informal market of La Salada gradually became a “civilized” space in the sense of Norbert Elias (Elias 1975), in the context of the progressive monopolization, by a small group of entrepreneurs, of the use of force and the collection of taxes. They then show finely how this process largely contributed to the “decivilization” (p. 64) of Arquitecto Tucci, whose daily life became more violent as this gigantic market developed. Linked to the circulation of large amounts of cash (an estimated turnover of four billion dollars in 2011), the multiplication of opportunities to commit criminal acts in the immediate vicinity of La Salada has made the daily life of residents increasingly less predictable and safe over the last two decades.
At the same time, state representatives played a “key role” (p. 109) in perpetuating the violence. Norbert Elias’s description of the mutually reinforcing links between the pacification of everyday life and the presence of the state within a territory does not apply to the case of Arquitecto Tucci: the situation described by the authors is even the “exact opposite” of the civilizing process, in that the state here puts the poor “in danger”, especially because the police are involved in many illegal activities. Its agents are in fact considered by many respondents to be thieves (chorros) involved in various trafficking. Various courts have also largely proven the existence of bribes, linked to the coverage of illegal betting or prostitution networks, but also to various forms of involvement in trafficking (notably drugs). “Seen from the urban margins, the State is sometimes the accomplice of the crime” (p. 171), which explains the strong reluctance of the local population to call the police in the event of a problem. J. Auyero and M. Berti therefore insist on the importance, for the “political sociology of urban marginality” that they defend, of taking into account “the least official and least public State actions” (p. 177).
To some extent, it is the poor themselves who take it upon themselves to protect themselves and their loved ones from violence. One of the most common ways of doing this is the “fortification” (p. 141) of houses, which involves, in particular, reinforcing the separations (doors, windows) between the dwellings and the street. The inhabitants of Arquitecto Tucci can also resort to violence in order to deal with various problems in their daily lives, at home or in the neighbourhood. The authors thus show that physical aggression is part of a local “repertoire of action”, and that “street violence” (street violence) and domestic violence can be linked in different ways. The use of violence against loved ones can even in some cases be seen as an instrument of care as a last resort, particularly when it comes to “disciplining” (p. 137) children in order to protect them from dangers perceived as greater, such as drug addiction or entry into organized delinquency.
Poor neighborhood and socialization to violence
While the medium- and long-term effects of exposure to violence are not at the heart of the analysis, the research suggests that their residential experience leaves indelible marks “on the minds and bodies of those who live on the urban margins” (p. 13), particularly children. Many of Berti’s students have witnessed a murder or a shooting, and their drawings and photographs, as well as numerous ethnographic vignettes, show the central presence of violence in their daily lives. Examples include the case of a 13-year-old student who can accurately distinguish the caliber of different firearms; a classmate’s photo of a mural depicting a teenager shot dead and his two great passions (Club Atlético Boca Juniors and Michael Jackson); or a student’s account of how her grandfather taught her how to kill a man with her hands by having her practice on a piece of fruit.
Although Arquitecto Tucci’s children are exposed to violence on a daily basis, they do not appreciate it, as their drawings suggest, showing that they are very afraid of shootings and fights and much prefer playing football. But the authors rightly draw our attention to the need to consider the socializing effects of their exposure to violence:
What kinds of action, perception, and evaluation schemes are incorporated in the context of this routine exposure to such a harsh environment? What kind of habitus emerges from this life of constant exposure to danger? (p. 168)
This is a fundamental reflection, insofar as, if children and adolescents must undoubtedly be considered as the first victims of violence in this type of urban context, it helps to better understand how and why some of them will, a few years later, join the ranks of its perpetrators.