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Patients of the State: An Ethnographic Account of Poor People's Waiting

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

Javier Auyero
Javier Auyero*
Affiliation:
University of Texas at Austin
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Abstract

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Drawing on six months of ethnographic fieldwork in the main welfare office of the city of Buenos Aires, this article dissects poor people's lived experiences of waiting. The article examines the welfare office as a site of intense sociability amidst pervasive uncertainty. Poor people's waiting experiences persuade the destitute of the need to be patient, thus conveying the implicit state request to be compliant clients. An analysis of the sociocultural dynamics of waiting helps us understand how (and why) welfare clients become not citizens but patients of the state.

Resumen

Resumen

Basado en seis meses de trabajo etnográfico en la sala de espera del Ministerio de Desarrollo Social de la ciudad de Buenos Aires, este trabajo examina las experiencias que los pobres urbanos tienen de la espera. El artículo estudia la sala de espera como un sitio de intensa sociabilidad en medio de una generalizada incertidumbre. Las experiencias de la espera convencen a los destituidos que tienen que ser pacientes, transmitiendo —de manera implícita— un mensaje estatal: tienen que ser beneficiarios sumisos. Un análisis de las dinámicas socioculturales de la espera nos ayuda a entender cómo (y porqué) los beneficiarios de los programas de asistencia se convierten no en ciudadanos sino en pacientes del estado.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , 2011 , pp. 5 - 29
Copyright
Copyright ©2011 by the Latin American Studies Association

Footnotes

Special thanks to Shila Vilker, Nadia Finck, and Agustín Burbano de Lara, who worked as research assistants for this project. Many thanks also to Matthew Desmond, Megan Comfort, Rodrigo Hobert, Loïc Wacquant, Lauren Joseph, and Christine Williams for their critical comments on different versions of this article. Previous versions of this article were presented at the Lozano Long Conference at the University of Texas at Austin and at the Instituto Gino Germani (University of Buenos Aires). The National Science Foundation, Award SES-0739217, and the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin provided funding for this project.

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