Proletarian Lives: Routines, Identity, and Culture in Contentious Politics (Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics)

Based on multi-year ethnographic fieldwork on the Unemployed Workers' Movement in Argentina (also known as the piqueteros), Proletarian Lives provides a case study of how workers affected by job loss protect their traditional forms of life by engaging in progressive grassroots mobilization. Using life-history interviews and participant observation, the book analyzes why some activists develop a strong attachment to the movement despite initial reluctance and frequent ideological differences. Marcos Pérez argues that a key appeal of participation is the opportunity to engage in age and gender-specific practices associated with a respectable blue-collar lifestyle threatened by long-term socioeconomic decline. Through their daily involvement in the movement, older participants reconstruct the routines they associate with a golden past in which factory jobs were plentiful, younger activists develop the kind of habits they were raised to see as valuable, and all members protect communal activities undermined by the expansion of poverty and violence. Cover 1 Half-title page 3 Series page 4 Title page 5 Copyright page 6 Dedication 7 Contents 9 List of Figures 10 Acknowledgments 11 1 Introduction 15 2 “I Became a Bum”: Economic Reforms and Everyday Life in Argentina 43 3 “The Struggle Is on the Streets”: Democracy, Neoliberalism, and Piquetero Mobilization 63 4 “I Know What It Means to Follow a Schedule”: Reconstruction of Past Routines 85 5 “If It Rains or Hails, You Still Have to Show Up for Work”: Development of New Habits 115 6 “We Drink Mate, Eat a Good Stew, Talk ... and That Way Time Flies”: Protection of Communal Activities 140 7 “A Small Thing to Get By”: Potential, Voluntary, and Reluctant Dropouts 174 8 Conclusion 198 Appendix A An Ethnography of a Poor People’s Movement in the Global South 210 Appendix B List of Recorded Interviewees 228 References 240 Index 255 Based on interviews and participant observation, Proletarian Lives studies how routines help sustain activism. Focusing on Argentina's piquetero movement, Pérez explores why people affected by job loss react to the undermining of their traditional ways of life not by embracing authoritarian politics, but by engaging in progressive mobilization.