``From the client's point(s) of view'': How poor peopleperceive and evaluate political clientelism1

JAVIER AUYEROState University of NewYork at Stony Brook

The sociologist must never ignore that the speci¢ccharacteristic of her point of view is to be a point ofview on a point of view. She can only reproduce thepoint of view of her object and constitute as such,through resituating it within the social space, bytaking up that very singular (and, in a sense, veryprivileged) viewpoint at which it is necessary toplace oneself to be able to take (in thought) allpossible points of view.

Pierre Bourdieu

The tropes of ` disorganization'' and ` anomy and radicalism'' havegoverned the studies of the North American ` dark ghetto''2 and of theLatin American slum.3 Similarly, ``political clientelism'' has been one ofthe strongest and most recurrent images in the study of political prac-tices of the poor ^ urban and rural alike ^ in Latin America, almost tothe point of becoming a sort of ``metonymic prison''4 for this part ofthe Americas. Political clientelism ` represents the distribution of re-sources (or promise of) by political o¤ce holders or political candidatesin exchange for political support, primarily ^ although not exclusively^ in the form of the vote.''5 Used (and abused) to explain why poor anddestitute people sometimes follow populist leaders, and at other timesauthoritarian or conservative ones,6 the notion of political clientelismhas been understood as one of the central elements of the populistappeal7 but has also been de¢ned as a mode of vertical inclusiondistinct from populism.8

Political clientelism is also recurrently associated with the limitationsof Latin America's unceasingly fragile democracies.9 It is seen as oneof the pillars of oligarchic domination that reinforce and perpetuatethe role of traditional political elites,10 and as a practice that remains` at the core of party behavior.''11 The exchange of votes for favors is

Theory and Society 28: 297^334, 1999.ß 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

seen as one of the possible relationships between political parties andorganized popular groups or community associations. In this case, theanalysis usually focuses on the e¡ort made by popular organizedgroups to ` bypass traditional mechanisms of political cooptation,''12

and on the varying vulnerability of local associations to clientelistpenetration.13 Furthermore, political clientelism is examined as a formof atomization and fragmentation of the electorate or the ` popularsector,''14 as a way of inhibiting collective organization and discouragingreal political participation. Scholars focusing on cases of ` collectiveclientelism''15 ¢nd this last examination inadequate. The widely used(but rarely scrutinized) antinomy between traditional, clientelist politicsand modern or radical forms of participation has been contested inrecent analyses as oversimpli¢ed.16

This resilient and pervasive informal institution is recurrently consideredan ``old societal ill'' opposed to the participatory ideology of socialmovements and their emphasis on political autonomy,17 but is alsounderstood to be based on trust and solidarity.18 Last, but hardly least,vertical clientelist bonds are conceptualized as the exact opposite ofthose horizontal networks of civic engagement that foster a truly civiccommunity, and that, in turn, ` make democracy work.''19

De¢nitional problems aside,20 an overwhelmingly negative image ofclientelism permeates scholarly analyses. Among sociologists, anthro-pologists, and political scientists, it is common knowledge that clientelistexchanges concatenate into pyramidal networks. The structure of these` domination networks,''21 and the key actors within them (patrons,brokers, and clients), are well studied phenomena of popular politicallife.22 Most scholars of the subject also agree that clientelistic relation-ships are as far from any kind of Simmelian sociability (` the purest,most transparent, most engaging kind of interaction ^ that amongequals''23) as from a societas leonina (a partnership in which all thebene¢ts go to one side). Scholars concur in that patron-broker-clientrelations are a cocktail of ^ to continue with the Simmelian language ^di¡erent forms of social interaction: exchange, con£ict, domination,and prostitution. Clientelist relations are seen as hierarchical arrange-ments, as bonds of dependence and control,24 based on power di¡er-ences and on inequality. Being highly selective, particularistic anddi¡use they are ``characterized by the simultaneous exchange of twodi¡erent types of resources and services: instrumental (e.g., economicand political) and ``sociational'' or expressive (e.g., promises of loyaltyand solidarity).''25 Clientelist relationships are also characterized by

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having individuals as their protagonists in opposition to organizedcorporate groups. Finally, they are said to be neither ` fully contractualnor legal ^ in fact, they are often illegal ^ but are based on moreinformal, though tightly binding, understandings.'' 26 Clientelist relation-ships, most scholars agree, constitute a realm of submission, a cluster ofbonds of domination in opposition to a realm of mutual recognition,of equality and cooperation.

The uses of the notion of political clientelism are currently beingscrutinized and problematized from di¡erent perspectives and in re-gard to diverse geographical settings.27 Except for these few criticalapproaches, contemporary studies on the subject have come to animpasse, becoming familiar, almost predictable.28 Revolving around thesame limited issues, they repeatedly leave certain subjects untouched.One of those unexplored subjects is the central concern of this article:the di¡erent and competing views that ` clients'' themselves hold of` clientelist politics.''

Testimonies about the working of clientelism are usually gatheredfrom oppositional politicians, journalists, or community leaders. Onlysporadically does one listen to the so-called clients, to the reasons theygive for their behavior (supporting a particular patron or broker, attend-ing rallies, etc.), to their own judgments concerning what others label` anti-democratic'' procedures.29 The present article breaks with thisscholastic and externalist approach by focusing on the opinions andevaluations of those involved in these clientelist exchanges. It examinesthe workings of clientelism from the client's point(s) of view.

The aims of this report are two-fold. First, I seek to provide freshethnographic data on a little known universe: that of Peronist clientelistpolitics in contemporary Argentina. At a more theoretical level, thisarticle brings together relational and experiential sociologies in orderto: a) problematize the notion of political clientelism as a mechanismof massive electoral mobilization, and b) rethink the logic of clientelistpractices under conditions of extreme material and symbolic destitution.

My analysis of the clients' viewpoints is based on life-stories, in-depthinterviews, and informal conversations I carried out during an intensiveyear of ¢eldwork (1996) with residents of a shantytown called VillaParaiso.30 Villa Paraiso is an enclave of urban poverty located in thecity of Cospito, in the southern part of the Conurbano Bonaerense,31

bordering the Federal Capital of Argentina. Paraiso ^ as its residents

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call it ^ is one of the oldest slums in the Conurbano Bonaerense, andthe largest in terms of population (approximately 15,000 inhabitantsaccording to the last population census).32

The majority of Paraiso residents have continuously de¢ned themselvesas Peronists, and this self-de¢nition is re£ected in their voting patterns(in the last presidential elections [May 1995], nearly 60 percent of theslum population of Paraiso voted for the presidential candidate of thePeronist party). Peronism is still the dominant force within this enclaveof urban poverty and destitution in the eyes of those who, like the localpriest, told me: ` This is a very Peronist slum,'' or like the state o¤cialswho admitted: ``Paraiso is a stronghold of the Peronist party.''

This article asks how people who receive favors, goods, and servicesfrom Peronist party brokers ^ who undoubtedly attempt to ``win theirvote'' ^ think and feel about these exchanges, and how they evaluatethe brokers'activities and politics in general. The ¢rst part of the articledescribes the web of ongoing relationships in which brokers and clientsof the Peronist party are located. The second part concentrates on: a)the di¡erent points of view that circulate within the slum concerningthe distribution of goods before the political rallies organized by thelocal brokers, b) the diverse evaluations that the people make about thePeronist brokers, and c) the competing views they have about politicsand its particualar role in the history of the neighborhood. Drawinginspiration fromTilly's model of the polity, and from Bourdieu's notionof doxic experience, the third part of this article examines the sourceand possible meanings of these di¡erent views, evaluations, and judg-ments.33 After reconstructing the clients' viewpoints and embeddingthem in a relational matrix, the concluding sections consider the notionof clientelism as a mechanism of domination and as a strategy ofelectoral mobilization.

To foreshadow some of the results of the reconstruction of the clients'viewpoints, I suggest that clientelist networks are, in e¡ect, dominationnetworks but that their e¡ectiveness as a mechanism of electoral mobi-lization is far from certain. Because clientelist domination depends oneveryday, strong, face-to-face relationships, it has certain limitationsin terms of massive vote-getting capacity. I show that the media-drivenimage (unintendedly reproduced by those scholarly approaches that donot take the clients' perspectives into account) of an exchange of votesfor favors (that allegedly instantiates during electoral times) is mislead-ing. We should avoid the mechanistic (and stigmatizing) view of poor

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people as Pavlovian agents who vote and support political candidatesin exchange for favors and services, refocusing our studies on the rela-tional and experiential matrix (the ``dynamics of social interweavings,''to quote Norbert Elias34) that links patrons, brokers, and (some)` clients'' in ongoing problem-solving networks, intricate webs of mate-rial, and symbolic resources.

The characters in the problem-solving network: Clients and brokers

Goods are used for establishing social relations.Mary Douglas

Juancito and I ` began our friendship more than twelve years ago. . . .''Nelida told me one cold winter morning in Villa Paraiso. JuancitoPisutti is the president of the Unidad Basica (UB) ``Peron Vive.''35

Nelida tells me that Juancito ` is so good. He always lends you a hand.Now I am on medication, because I had a hemoplegy, and the medicineis so expensive .. . I can't a¡ord it, and he helps me, he gets the medicinefrom the municipality . . . he helps me a lot, and whatever happens atthe UB he calls me, because I collaborate at the UB.'' She says that themost important politician in Villa Paraiso is Juancito. ` Here, on ourblock, we have Juancito,'' she assuredly notes.

` I always show up at Matilde's UB, in gratitude or because of ourfriendship, they always call me, and I go,'' Adela says. Her daughterand husband got their jobs (respectively, as a public employee at theMunicipality and as a garbage collector) through Matilde, who is acouncilwoman of the Peronist Party. Adela never misses the politicalrallies organized by Matilde, she ``has to be thankful to her.''

Adela and Nelida are what the literature on political clientelism wouldlabel ` clients'': actors who give their political support to a broker or apatron in exchange for particular goods, favors, and services. Scholarlyand journalistic accounts would also label Nelida and Adela as ` clients.''They are the ones who attend rallies, support this or that politician and^ usually ^ vote for Peronism because, so the tale runs, they ` receivethings'' from the Party: a job, medicine, a metal sheet for the roof, pairsof sneakers for their sons and daughters, a choripan (meat sausagesandwich) on the day of the rally, etc.36

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Matilde and Juancito are what the literature on the subject calls politi-cal brokers, mediators between a political patron ^ in this case, RoloFontana, the mayor of Cospito ^ and some of his supporters, knownas ` clients.'' Capituleros, in the Peru of the 1930s and 1940s, caboeleitoral in Brazil from the 1930s on, gestor, padrino politico, or caciquein Mexico at various points in its history, precinct captains in thepolitical machines of Chicago and elsewhere in the U.S., caudillo barrialin the Radical and the Conservative parties of Argentina in the 1920s,referente or puntero Peronista in the Argentina of the 1990s:37 althoughthere are signi¢cant di¡erences among them, their function is essen-tially the same, they operate as go-betweens.38 They mediate betweentheir caudillos, chefes politicos, or ward bosses and clients.

In Villa Paraiso, as in many poor neighborhoods in the ConurbanoBonaerense, one of the available means of satisfying the poor's basicneeds for food and health care is through the political party that hasdirect access to national, provincial, and, as in this case, local stateresources: the Peronist Party. In poverty-stricken neighborhoods,squatter settlements, and slums, the Unidades Basicas constitute oneof the most important places in which basic needs can be satis¢ed,through which basic problems can be solved. These Unidades Basicasgive incredible organizational strength to the Peronist party and arethe sites in which Peronist brokers ^ known as punteros or referentes ^are located.

Brokers usually do favors (such as distribute food and medicine) fortheir potential voters and for others, but they are not alone in theirwork. They almost always have an inner circle of followers. Thesefollowers are the brokers' ``personal satellites.''39 The problem-solvingnetwork consists of a series of wheels of irregular shape, pivotingaround the di¡erent brokers. The broker is related to the members ofhis or her inner circle through strong ties of long-lasting friendship,parentage, or ¢ctive kinship. Both Matilde and Juancito ^ the twomost important and powerful local leaders in Villa Paraiso ^ have this` e¡ective network''40 around them, people with whom interactions aremore intense and more regular. This inner circle helps the brokers tosolve the everyday problems of slum-dwellers: they run the soup-kitchensthat function at the broker's Unidad Basica; they are normally in chargeof opening, cleaning, and maintaining the locale; they usually announcewhen the broker is available at the UB to the ` outer circle,'' and theyspread the news when food is being distributed at the UB or theMunicipal building.

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The outer circle ^ i.e. the potential bene¢ciaries of the brokers' distrib-utive capacities ^ are related to brokers through weak ties. 41 Theycontact the broker when problems arise or when a special favor isneeded (a food package, some medicine, a driver's license, the watertruck, getting a friend out of jail, and so on); but they do not developties of friendship or ¢ctive kinship with brokers. Although they mayattend some of the rallies or gatherings organized by the broker, oreven vote for him or her, they do not have an everyday, close, intimaterelationship with them. In other words, the borker's ties to the innercircles are dense and intense; their ties to the outer circle are moresparse and intermittently activated.

The bases for this strong relationship are multiple. Those who are partof the brokers' inner circle have known ``their brokers'' for quite a longtime (usually more than four or ¢ve years), and the brokers have ``lentthem a hand'' ^ as Adela told me ^ in a time of extreme hardship. Inthe life-stories and interviews I recorded, most of the members of theinner circle highlighted a foundational favor that inaugurated thislong-lasting and ^ as we shall see ^ ``very useful'' relationship. Brokersare portrayed as coming to rescue them without ulterior motives.Withthat foundational favor a relationship of mutual help is established.42

The foundational transactions develop into ties, which in turn willconcatenate into networks. Rosa represents an ideal typical illustrationof what I am trying to convey. She is now 54 years old, and has knownJuan Pisutti since 1990. In her own words, ` I didn't have enoughmoney to buy the eyeglasses that the doctor prescribed .. . a neighborsuggested to me to go to the Unidad Basica, where Pisutti would tellme whether I can get the eyeglasses or not.'' It was through Pisuttithat she got her new eyeglasses.When the soup-kitchen opened in theUB, Pisutti called Rosa to join the activities in his UB. Rosa reportedthat invitation in this way: ``While I use these eyeglasses, I have to begrateful to you, because I got them through you.. . .''

Within the Peronist problem-solving network, Peronist brokers func-tion as gatekeepers for the £ow of goods and services coming from theexecutive branch of the municipal power (the mayor) and the £ow ofsupport and votes coming from the ``clients.'' Resources (food andmedicine) come from the Municipality to the Unidad Basica, wherethe brokers have discretionary power to do what they want with them.The information concerning food distribution at the municipal build-ing also circulates through the UBs. As a woman from a UB told me:` Every month, at the Party meetings, the mayor informs us (the 140

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UBs that usually attend the meeting) of the date when they are going togive out food.. . .We tell the neighbors.''

Being members of the Peronist party, brokers have the connectionsthat enable them to gain access to knowledge about resource-distribu-tion. They enjoy what network analysts call ` positional centrality.''43

Although neighbors know, in general, about the food distribution atthe municipality, they do not know the precise date on which thedistribution will be carried out. Furthermore, they ignore the alwayschanging procedures to obtain the bags of food. Brokers do know thedates, and have the specially designed cards without which peoplecannot obtain the food. These cards are small tickets that have anumber on them that indicates the date on which they can go to themunicipal building.Whether or not the general population's ignoranceis ` deliberately created,'' or is an ignorance that ` just happens,''44 it isclear that Peronist punteros or referentes constantly attempt to erectthemselves as the (only) channels that facilitate transactions or re-source £ows.45

These functions of gatekeeping and information hoarding are sharedby many of the di¡erent types of brokers in diverse historical andgeographical settings. Precinct captains, capituleros, cabos eleitorales,caudillos, and punteros partake of the same structural location andfunction: ` A political broker can either obstruct or facilitate the £owof demands, favors, goods and services to or from some constitu-ency.'' 46

The client's viewpoint

Despite the limitations of the ` clientelist impasse,'' the literature accu-rately delineates the system of objective relations brie£y summarizedabove. With minor di¡erences, most of the literature describes thesystems of relations in which patrons, brokers, and clients are located(networks, dyads, sets), the ` exchanges'' that take place within thosenetworks, and the brokers' functions within them. Notwithstandingrecent actor-centered approaches,47 a vital shortcoming of most of theliterature is that it provides an inadequate explanation for the subjec-tive dimension of clientelism, i.e., insu¤cient attention is paid to theexperiences, thoughts, and evaluations embodied in those ``objective''relationships. As much of the literature on political clientelism suggests,but inadequately explores, the distribution of goods and services is a

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necessary, but not the only, condition for the operation of the clientelistworld. Because the acts of giving and receiving are, to use E. P.Thomp-son's phrase, lived human experiences, the cluster of beliefs and assump-tions encompassing them ^ explaining and clarifying them, justifyingand legitimizing them ^ is as important as the ` exchanges'' themselves.If we are to understand the full complexity of political clientelism, weshould thereby retrieve, or better, reconstruct, the client's perspective.

The e¡ort dovetails with Geertz's emphasis on the need to study socialphenomena ``from the actors' point of view.''48 Far from being a newversion of the impossible task of entering the actors' minds, recoveringthe protagonist's point(s) of view means that we should situate ourselvesin the position and in the set of relationships from which ` clientelist''practices, evaluations, and beliefs are being constructed, and makesense of them from the vantage point of that location. Although I thinkit is important to retrieve the ` clients' point(s) of view,'' I share thecritique that has been made of the purposely ` empathetic dissection ofthe native's point of view.''AsWacquant points out in his exploration ofthe ` pugilistic point of view,'' it is very debatable ` whether one canpinpoint a single, generic, `native' point of view, as opposed to a rangeof discrepant, competing, or warring viewpoints, depending on struc-tural location within the world under examination.''49

To anticipate some results of this reconstruction, I will argue that, fromthe outside, what appears as an exchange of votes for favors is seenfrom the inside in many di¡erent (and, sometimes, antagonistic) ways:manipulation versus caring, interested action (politics, calculative ex-change) versus disinterested actions (friendship). Furthermore, most ofthose who receive vital resources on an everyday basis do not see theirbond with the broker as a power relationship. For them, clientelism ishabitual practical knowledge, thus hampering a spectatorial postureon those power relations.

Same rally: Contrasting interpretations

` On our block,'' Susy told me, ` Matilde donated the pipes to constructthe sewer.Yet she never told us: `I give you this, but you should do this,go there, or vote for me.' The only thing she told us was that she wouldlike to come and see when we have ¢nished constructing the sewagesystem.'' Susy lives across the street from the local school. Esther, theschool's director, has another interpretation of the same sewage instal-

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lation. She agrees that the pipes were supplied by councilwomanMatilde, but she stresses the exchange aspect of the operation byreproducing a phrase that ^ Esther believes ^ Matilde presumablytold the bene¢ciaries of ``her pipelines'': ``Whenever I send the bus tothe corner of your house in order to be loaded (for a rally) . . . you knowwhat to do.'' For the school director, Matilde exchanges pipelines forattendance to rallies. For Susy, who is the direct bene¢ciary of thesewage installation, the pipelines are one demonstration ^ among manyothers ^ of how helpful Matilde is.

Agents who ^ as the director of the school ^ do not live in the slum butonly work there are the only ones who use the term ``political clientelism''to convey this exchange of goods and favors for demonstrations ofsupport. An architect from a non-governmental organization, theschool director, and an activist of a center-left party (who lives in anearby neighborhood) are the only ones who refer to the politicalpractices inside the slum as following a ` clientelist logic.'' They use thenotion of ``clientelism'' as a) an indictment of the manipulative practicesof the slum's political brokers, b) evidence of the ``innocence'' of slum-dwellers, or c) a manifestation of their enduring and ` traditional waysof doing things.''As the activist of the center-left party tells me as soonas we start our conversation about politics in the slum: ` You know, weare against political clientelism, the handing out of food so that peoplego to the rallies . . . .'' Yet, although they are the only ones who use theterm ` clientelism,'' they are not alone in denouncing the ` utilization ofthe needs of the people for political purposes.'' Many neighbors usuallyrefer to the rallies organized by the Peronist party as a palpable demon-stration of the way the needy can be ` used'' by ``corrupt politicians.''

Many neighbors insist that the ``punteros use the people'' for the rallies,and that this ` use'' works against the interests of the neighbors because,as one of them puts it, ``there are not enough rallies in a month to feeda family.'' Rally attendance is seen as a demonstration of the ``naivete''of some inhabitants or of their lack of psycho-social development (` Doyou see those buses, they are going to pick people up for the rally. . . . '' Idon't understand, we will never grow up.. . .'' Toni, an old-time residentof the slum, told me). As Horacio ^ a Peronist who used to attendrallies ^ angrily told me:

H: How are you gonna go to a rally in which there are four or ¢ve bottles ofred wine circulating, and they touch your wife's ass? And in which you seethat they are drunk and smoking pot? . . . He (the Peronist broker) is the one

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who takes 50 people that smoke marijuana and drink wine and go and shoutas crazy people, and if they have to punch someone they will . . . . Nobody isgonna come for me, because I do not smoke or drink, and because I will go tothe rally to listen to what is being said . . . . I like to bring 20 people that arehealthy. They (Peronist brokers) prefer to bring 100 because they give themwine and pot, they don't go without that. Politics is like that .. . .

The distribution of marijuana and wine to the young people whoattend the rally is an open secret, something that, as Toni told me,` everybody knows.'' This ` open secret'' has a polemically double edge.On the one hand, it serves to vent one of the dominant antagonismsthat runs through the slum: youngsters versus the rest. Older residentsubiquitously point at the youngsters of the slum as the major source ofdelinquency, insecurity, and danger.50 The rally is another occasion tosingle out these youngsters and hold them publicly responsible foreverything that happens in the slum. On the other hand, the associa-tion between drugs/alcohol and politics is a way of condemning thepolitical doings of slum brokers and to assert that this ` way of doingpolitics'' has nothing to do with the way they understand things shouldbe. As Toni succinctly puts it:

Toni: Inside the slum she (Matilde) does whatever she wants . . . .

J: What do you mean?

Toni: She calls the people whenever there is a rally, she uses those guys whoare idling around, she takes them to paint walls, she uses them for the rallies,to play the drums, and when the day is over she gives them a packet of foodor a joint . . . ..

The attendance at rallies to show support for a candidate or an o¤cialis probably the most blatant manifestation of what many label ` clientel-ist politics.'' Yet, it is the most super¢cial expression. Attending ralliesexpresses deep-seated, usually long-lasting relationships between thosewho participate in them ^ the problem-holders (` clients'') and theproblem-solvers (brokers of the Peronist Party). The next section ana-lyzes this super¢cial manifestation by asking: How do those who arepointed out as ` used,'' ` manipulated,'' ` carried,'' or ``clients'' evaluatetheir attendance at the rallies?

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Rallies as ``demonstration of gratitude'' or ``collaboration''

Although none of those who got a job or some favor through thedecisive intervention of the Peronist brokers would admit that theywere asked something in exchange for what they received, a moresubtle association can be seen. Speci¢cally, the ` client'' feels compelledto attend the rally (the acto) but does not understand it as a reciprocatingduty in exchange for the job or favor rendered.

Lucina was Matilde's cleaning lady until she had a stroke. She gave upher work and got a pension of $110 through Matilde who, at the time,was the director of the Social Welfare section of the Municipality.Currently, Lucina is taking very expensive medicine for her sickness,which is also provided by Matilde. Her physician at the Hospital Evitais a friend of Matilde's and, thereby, ``assists me very well.'' Lucina'shusband works as a public employee at the Municipality ^ a job he got,needless to say, through Matilde.

Lucina: Maybe for the rallies . . . yes (she asked us for something), but shedoesn't pay attention to whether someone who got medicine from her reallyattends the rally or not. Sometimes, she promises a bag of food for the peoplethat go to the acto.

Monica agrees, Matilde never explicitly asks them to attend the ralliesin exchange for what they receive ` from her'' (mostly medicines andfood, in her case).

(People) go (to the rally) because they like it. They think that they have tothank her (agradecerle) for what she gives us. I talk to my neighbors aboutMatilde, and they really appreciate her. I tell them to go and ask for medi-cine, because if she has it, she will hand it out. And if she doesn't she will tryto get it, or tell you where to look.. . .

No one designated ^ and stigmatized ^ by neighbors and outsideagents as ` manipulated'' would say they go to the actos because theyreceive things. They would call their assistance either collaboration orgratitude (colaboracion, gratitud).

Rosa gets expensive medicine for her father through Juancito. She alsogot her eyeglasses through his intervention at the Welfare Section ofMunicipality. In reference to her usual participation in the Peronistrallies she says, ``I say that I have to ful¢ll my obligation to him (paracumplir con el). If my presence is useful to him [Juancito], I'll gothere . . . . It is my form of saying `thank you.' ''

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Coca is part of the permanent sta¡ at Juancito's Unidad Basica. Shesometimes gets a bonus from him to get food at the Municipality andshe receives milk from the UB for her child. She openly admits thatthere is distribution of food before and after the rallies; yet, she conteststhe view that that is the cause of their attendance. Carefully analyzed,her statement can be taken as a clear-cut distinction between theexchange of things and the generative principle of the clients' actions.Most of the half-scholarly and half-journalistic literature on politicalclientelism con£ates both elements. Yet, if we are to believe Coca, thethings that circulate before and after the rally should not be taken asthe reasons of their attendance to the rallies. She, in a way, cautions usagainst a common misperception: we cannot take the network £ow(goods and favors, votes and support) as an explanation of actor's dis-positions and representations.

We go to the rally and after attending, after a week or so, Juancito brings foodfrom the municipality, and he distributes it among those who have attendedthe rally, in gratitude to those who went. Sometimes he buys chorizos (meatsausages), he prepares some sandwiches, he gives out sandwiches. I under-stand that he does that because people support him, I understand it as a kindof gratitude, I do not think (he does that) to buy people (comprar a la gente).It is a way to show gratitude (mostrarle el agradecimiento).

` Gratitude'' goes without saying, because ^ almost always ^ it comeswithout saying. People who receive things know that they have to go,they are part of a universe in which everyday favors imply some returnas the rule of the game, a rule understood as a ``scheme immanent inpractice,''51 as a mandate that exists in a practical state. As relationsbetween problem-holders and problem-solvers are ` practical'' ^ insofaras they are routinely ` practised, kept up, and cultivated''52 through thedistribution of things and the granting of favors ^ attendance at a rallyis part of the stock of practical knowledge. This habitual knowledgecan be the subject of discourse only when explicitly requested. Theyhave such a close relation to the broker's distributive practices thata spectatorial point of view on the ` exchange'' is precluded.53 Chattingwith Coca ^ and pretending that I was not understanding what she wastelling me (or probably not really understanding it) ^ I asked her.

J: So when Matilde gets the medicine you need, does she come and tell you:you have to come with me to the rally?

C: No (explaining to me), I know (yo se) that I have to go with her instead ofwith someone else. Because she gave me medicine, or some milk, or a packetof yerba or sugar, I know that I have to go to her rally in order to ful¢ll my

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obligation to her (Yo se que tengo que ir al acto para cumplir con ella), to showmy gratitude. Because if I do not go to her rally, then when I need somethingshe won't give it to me, (she would say) ``go ask the person who went to therally with you.''

Mariana tells me her family was having a hard time because her fatherhad been ¢red from his job as a carpenter, and her sister (Luisa) hadlost her part-time job.

Mariana: . . . we didn't have any resources at all. So my mother looked for thesupport from Matilde, and Matilde helped her a lot. She helped us with foodand with the job for Luisa. That's the reason why, if my mother can help withanything, she will be there, with Matilde .. . .

J: Helping Matilde in which sense?

Mariana: Attending a rally, because Matilde always needs people. Or whenshe organizes a festival, she always needs some people to help her in theorganization.

Out of gratitude for or in collaboration with the broker's needs, fewbelieve their participation in the rallies constitutes an obligation.Victoria's husband (Mario) works full-time at the local health center,a job that he got after participating in Matilde's clique for more thansix months. ` Matilde really delivers . . . she sends powdered milk to theUB around the corner.''

J: Does she ask something in exchange for that?

Catalina (Victoria's daughter): No, sometimes we go to the rallies, but there'sno obligation ... .

Victoria: It is not an obligation, as my husband (Mario) says: ` You have toinvite (people to the rallies) and tell them that it is through Rolo (the Mayor)that they are getting the milk . . . they are being helped, so it would be good ifthey show up in at least one rally.''

In addition to being a ``collaboration'' with the brokers, or an ``expres-sion of gratitude'' for their ``sacri¢ced work,'' the rally is also seen as` spontaneous'' participation, and as an opportunity to evade the dull-ness of everyday life in the slum. Ruli and her neighbor tell me thatthey attend the rallies for ` enjoyment.''

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We are inside our homes the whole day, we cannot go out anywhere . . . sowhen there is a rally, we catch the bus, we take a ride, we go to the park, weenjoy ourselves . . . (nos distraemos) . . . . We amuse ourselves . . . but don't askus what happened in the rally, because we don't understand anything, that'sthe truth.We enjoy ourselves 'cause, where else can we go? . . . (Nos divertimos,porque si no, donde mas vamos a ir?).

Against the dull and violent environment of the slum, the entertain-ment provided by the rally can hardly be underestimated. Only aremoved and distant point of view can miss the fact that some of thosewho attend the rallies do not usually have ``free time.'' The extremematerial deprivation in which they spend their everyday lives can alsohelp us understand the meaning of a ``free ride.'' In a demonetizedenvironment in which a peso (a dollar) is a lot, a free round trip to thecenter of the capital for the whole family ^ around 8 dollars ^ isextremely signi¢cant, not only materially, but also symbolically asillustrated in the case of Juana. Juana is probably an extreme case, butnevertheless worth mentioning as an example of the entertainmentthat a rally might provide in these deprived contexts. During thesummer of 1989, she attended the launching of Menem's presidentialcampaign in Mar del Plata (Buenos Aires' main beach resort). Itwas the ¢rst time that Juana (by then 34 years old) saw the sea. Theparty paid for the bus fare and they stayed at the Transport Union'shotel, where ^ Juana remarked ^ ``they even have hot water, I can'tcomplain .. . .'' It was through the Party that she saw the sea and stayedin a hotel with hot water.

The literature on political clientelism and most of the political andjournalistic accounts of ` clientelist practices'' are constantly concernedwith the ``negative determinants''54 ^ mainly economic deprivation, butalso ` lack'' of civic culture, a resilient ` culture of dependency,'' etc. ^that supposedly hold poor people under the grip of clientelist politics.Although the (diverse and, sometimes competing) meanings of therallies can only be grasped against the backdrop of extreme materialdeprivation and the sense of isolation that pervade much of the harshreality of slum-dwellers, the ``positive attraction'' that this speci¢csocial universe might have should not be neglected. Although hardlythe only possible meaning, the ` entertaining'' character of a rallyshould also be included in the picture if we are to take the participant'spoint of view seriously. As Ruli precisely summarizes (laughing), ` Wego to the rallies to enjoy ourselves, we really enjoy ourselves.'' And asJuana insisted, ` I saw the sea . . . . It's so nice.'' If we, meaning peoplewho neither live nor work in the slum, are to understand what Juana is

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saying, that is, to imagine ourselves in her place and to take her pointof view, to understand that if we were in her shoes we ``would doubtlessbe and think just like her,''55 we could not miss the apparently super-¢cial point that she (a 34-year-old-woman, with no stable job, with ahusband who just lost his, with a handicapped baby girl) witnessed forthe ¢rst time the vastness of the sea and stayed in a hotel with hotwater. Can she really complain? Doesn't she have to be grateful to theone who invited her to that rally?

The ``positive attraction'' is not limited to the day of the rally. Thosewho got a municipal job through the explicit action of ` their brokers''believe that attending the rallies is an important element in a longprocess through which they demonstrate their faith in the broker. Inthis way, they show him or her that they are loyal, ``ready-to-help,'' andresponsible, and, in turn, hope they are given the chance to get a publicjob. In this sense, attendance at the rally provides information aboutcommitment to a broker (and his/her commitment to followers). Assuch, the rally is a ritual, in Paige and Paige's sense of the term: anopportunity to declare the intentions of followers and brokers, and toevaluate each other's intentions.56

Alfonsina is in charge of the distribution of milk from a state-fundedsocial assistance program at ` Juancito's UB.'' She got her job as acleaning woman at a public school through Juancito.

A: When there is a rally, we (the people of the Party) collaborate in any waypossible . . . so, maybe you can get a job there, but you have to be patient . . . .

J: And you were patient . . . .

A: Yes, I was patient, and with patience I got it . . . .

From a removed point of view, the rally is seen as the product ofthe things given, and the actors who attend them as subjects whomechanically respond to material incentives. Once we take the client'spoint of view seriously we see that the rally ^ either conceptualized ascollaboration, as an expression of gratitude, or as an occasion forhaving a good time ^ is not an extraordinary event but part and parcelof the routine solution of survival problems. It is not an addendum to theact of solving a problem, of obtaining medicine, a package of food, or^ in the best case ^ a public post, but is an element within an everydaynetwork of relationships.57 It is true that one of the constitutive out-comes of this on-going problem-solving network is rally attendance.

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But to understand the massive attendance as a mere product of thepersonalized distribution of favors and goods is a ``distortion border-ing on dis¢gurement,'' of the kind that reduces boxing to physicalaggression.58 This distortion oversimpli¢es a complex and multifariousactivity into a single aspect, usually the most salient and questionableto those who are not part of it.

Brokers, good or bad?

For those who view participating in a rally as collaboration or anexpression of gratitude, brokers are not the unscrupulous and corruptpoliticians whom other neighbors talk about. They are ` good,'' ` help-ful,'' and ``sacri¢cing'' people with whom problem-holders have a per-sonal relationship, a relationship sometimes conveyed as ` friendship,''but always referred to as worth keeping.

Although Juancito is not held responsible for the distribution of mar-ijuana and wine among the youngsters of the neighborhood ^ asMatilde is ^ both are seen by many neighbors as ``using the people''and, for that reason, as ``bad and corrupt'' politicians who ``play theirown game.'' Those who see the rallies as manipulation of the peoplehold ^ needless to say ^ a negative evaluation of the brokers. They holdthe brokers responsible for the limited amount of resources that socialassistance programs distribute in the neighborhood (` they always keepthe goods for themselves''), and they accused them of ` deceiving thepeople.''59 Brokers are seen as politicians who only think about theway to rise in the political hierarchy.

This view contrasts with the one held by residents who solve most oftheir everyday life problems through the broker's intervention. Rosapoints out what an ``excellent person'' Juancito Pisutti is:

The way he takes care of people, he is an exceptional human being .. . . Hesu¡ers, because those who go there (the UB) will never leave without asolution to their problems. He has a solution for everyone. He willinglyadvises everyone. Many people ask him for money .. . and he uses his ownmoney. He never tells them that he doesn't have any money.

According to Alfonsina, ` everybody appreciates Juancito. He is alwayskeen to serve. He likes to help people. He is very patient.'' Carlitosshares this belief: ``Juancito sacri¢ces himself for the people of theslum.''

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Self-sacri¢cing and helpful are also terms other people use when refer-ring to Matilde: ` She is always present when something happens,''` She is so good,'' ` Matilde pays attention to every single detail.''All ofthem remark on her accessibility: ` You can go and see her wheneveryou have a problem, any problem, medicine, she will get it . . . if she isable to (solve the problem), be sure, she will do it . . . .''

It would be a gross misunderstanding to approach these evaluations ascalculated or cynical behaviour. The feeling of togetherness that manyexperience with ``their'' brokers and their sincere belief in the ` caring''actions of Matilde or Juancito prevent any possibility of distancingthemselves from the relationship and of acting as if they were trying tomaximize opportunities through the expression of a¡ection.

The most important point of agreement among slum-dwellers aboutthe brokers is that they are personally responsible for the distribution ofthings. The organization that grants a pension, o¡ers a job, or gives outmedicine or a food package is not the local, provincial, or nationalgovernment, but Matilde or Juancito. They are the ones who really care,who feel for them, who are their friends and who ^ as good friends ^ arealways available. Hundreds of pages of interview transcripts and ¢eld-notes testify to one simple ^ although essential ^ fact: it is not the statethat is perceived as the distributing agency; it is Matilde or Juancito.And as they are the ones who distribute the goods, they are seen as nothaving any obligation at all to do it; they do it because they reallywant to, because they care, because they ` sacri¢ce for the people.'' Asa youngster who is part of Matilde's circle nicely puts it:

People think it's her obligation to give out things, and it's not an obligation,she does it because she wants to. What's her obligation? Who is she? Is sheyour mother? People get confused a lot. You do them a favor, and it seemslike it is an obligation. And it is a favor.

A favor, according to the Oxford American Dictionary is ``an act thatis kindly or helpful beyond what is due or usual.'' Because Matildepersonally and willingly delivers the goods ^ beyond what is customaryand without having any obligation whatsoever to do it ^ the bene¢ciarycannot invoke any citizenship right to the thing given or the favorgranted. There is no third party to which you can resort in order toenforce your claim (what might constitute a right),60 but a personal-ized relationship out of which nothing can be obtained, no problemcan be solved.

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Politics, helpful or dirty?

` I don't work, I do politics'' ^ old bumper stickerinVilla Paraiso

It is hardly a new observation that party politics in Argentina is seen asextremely distant from everyday life concerns. It is seen as a ``dirty''activity that makes its sudden appearances at electoral times, and thendisappears in the obscure realm of unkept promises.61 As we saw, theassociation between the attendance at rallies and the distribution ofdrugs and alcohol is one expression of discontent with politicians andpolitics in general.

Some slum-dwellers believe that there is a ` time for elections'' whendemands can be quickly satis¢ed and goods promptly obtained becausepoliticians are eager to get their votes.62 As in many other settingsthroughout Argentina and Latin America,63 the ` time for politics'' isseen as something that occurs once in a while, something that breakswith the routine of everyday life in the barrio.

Rogelio, president of one of the few neighborhood associations, tellsme: ` Matilde shows up when there is time for politics, when there areelections, that is when politicians show up.. . .'' Horacio, himself thepresident of one of the many soccer clubs in the area, agrees: ``If wewant to get something (sewage system), we will have to wait for theelections. At that time we can demand something .. . we provide somany (votes) that we might get something in return.'' This belief that` electoral times'' are an opportunity to solve problems is anchored intheir own experiences. Both Rogelio and Horacio got aid for theirrespective organizations before the past two elections. ` Through politics,Hugo tells me, we got a plot of land for the club.. . . Now we need thebricks, so I will have to wait for the next election.''

` Today is the anniversary of Peron's birthday,'' Toni tells me, ` and I amsure that all the brokers are handing out food in the municipal building.''And later he adds, ` Today you are gonna see the workings of a UB.There is a young woman working in that UB across the street. She isgoing to look for some elderly people in the neighborhood, and shebrings them, she hugs them. She never goes and sees how they aredoing .. . .'' Toni summarizes this intermittent character that, he ¢rmlybelieves, politics takes in the slum: ``Each time there is a rally or anelection, they (people at the UBs) hand out food.'' Politics, in this

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shared view, is also seen as something you ` must do'' if ` you wanna getthings done.''As Mabel says, ``You know, nobody pays attention to youunless you are a relative or an acquaintance of a politician.'' Eitherrestricted to electoral times or limited to the multiple rally days, poli-tics is seen as a discontinuous activity. It is also seen as ``dirty'' and` corrupt.'' It is a ` lucrative business,'' an ` opportunity to get ahead''; itis ` deceitful'' and ` manipulative.''

As I said before, this is not a new observation. However, if one ``takesthe trouble to look closely,'' as W. F.Whyte recommends in his seminalstudy of the street-corner society,64 within the same destitute neighbor-hood, and even among people who live on the same block and whoshare the same categorical sociological attributes, there are strikinglycontrasting evaluations of politics. Almost all of them share the ideathat politics is something ``I don't do'' ^ and by implication, ` othersdo'' ^ sometimes insisting that they ``don't understand shit.'' All agreethat politics is a universe with its own rules and that it might serve toimprove one's lot, regardless of the common good. Yet some of themhighlight certain aspects of politics worth exploring.

Some residents appraise the work that brokers and the municipality dofor the neighborhood, not only with the distribution of food, but alsowith metal sheets and mattresses. ` There is a lot of help . . . the munic-ipality always has an answer, not only with the food, if you need ametal sheet, they'll give it to you .. . . In a UB, they used to give milkwith a piece of bread. Here, there is a lot of help, the one who saysthere is no help is lying .. . . What happens is that you have to go thereand wait, everything has its own time.''

In consonance with the perceived steady accessibility of the brokers ofthe Peronist Party, some people do not believe that the aid comingfrom politicians increases during election periods: ` assistance'' is aneveryday personalized issue.

J: Some of your neighbors told me that the aid comes quicker during electiontime?

V: No, I don't think so.. . .

A: From my point of view, it is always the same.. . .

Estela gets free (birth-control) pills from Matilde, and stresses that inthis way she saves ten pesos a month, ` which is a lot.'' She values

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Matilde's constant preoccupation with the barrio's problems: ` If youask her for something, she will give it to you.'' But it is probably in thefollowing two dialogues where the continuous character of local poli-tics, and the immediate relationship certain people have with localpoliticians, can be best grasped. Nelida receives the medicine for herhemoplegy from Juancito.

J: Who do you call when you need the water truck?

N: I look for Juancito. . . .

J: And when you have to do some paperwork at the municipality?

N: Juancito . . . Juancito . . . (laughing).

J: How did you become part of the (food distribution program) PlanVida?

N: (laughing) Juancito involved me in the program.. . . He registered me.

J: And how did you get involved in the Plan Pais?65

N:We registered here, on the corner. . . .

J: Through Juancito?

N: (smiling) . . . always through Juancito . . . Juancito (is) always there in themiddle (my emphasis).

Adela, whose daughter and husband got their jobs with the help ofMatilde, comments:

J: What do you do when people ask you for medicine?

A: I send them to Matilde . . . because they are there in the afternoons. . . .

M: (A's daughter) ^ Yes, Matilde also helps .. . .

A: Here we resort to Matilde . . . .

M: Matilde is like a small municipality, everybody goes there. . . .

J: Is there any place where powdered milk is distributed?

A: Matilde's!!!! (laughing).

The perception of politics as a continuous and helpful activity dovetails^ although imperfectly ^ with a certain narrative about the history of

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the neighborhood. Those who see politics as an everyday issue, as aconstant way of solving problems, and who perceive brokers as peoplewho are accessible and always ready to help, will highlight the presenceof the state ^ personi¢ed in the mayor or a particular broker ^ in theirrecounting of the barrio's history. In contrast, those who, as we justsaw, view politics and brokers as dirty, corrupt, or unscrupulous willplace emphasis on the neighbors' collective action to improve the slum.

The ``statist'' narrative of the barrio versus the ``epic'' version.Are we talking about the same asphalt?

One of the aims of my research was to trace a history of problem-solving in a poor neighborhood in Greater Buenos Aires, with thepurpose of illustrating the increasing relevance of clientelist arrange-ments in the way in which poor people solve their everyday survivalproblems.With that end in mind, I began to pay particular attention tothe stories people told me about the history of the neighborhood andof their own history in it. I was looking for patterns in the way peoplesolve their problems in a unitary history of a self-made neighborhood.After a period of holding stubbornly to the idea that ``there has to beone history of this place,'' I found myself reading the testimonies ofpeople who were telling me that the same asphalt was built by di¡erentpeople, or that the slum ``improved a lot'' because of di¡erent actions.During my ¢rst months of ¢eldwork, it was frustrating to discover thatwhat I was looking for ^ a ` history of the slum'' ^ was not there.However, the initial unmanageable anxiety gave way when I realizedthat these con£icting narratives were much more interesting. Theywere di¡erent narratives of the same events.

According to most residents, the slum improved a lot during the lastdecade, basically because of the paving of the streets. Before that, alight rain could turn the whole slum into a muddy nightmare. Yet,although everybody agrees that the asphalt ` made a real di¡erence,''there are at least two versions of the ``history of the asphalt.'' Onestresses the collective organization of the neighborhood that, so thestory goes, ` got together'' for the ¢rst time in the slum's history.

The asphalt was made by the neighbors, we organized soccer competitions,we sold chorizos and empanadas, and we collected the money .. . and themunicipality charged us to build it. The whole neighborhood was united .. . .(Roberto)

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Not only did the neighborhood change radically due to the asphalting,but ` el asfalto'' also implied a very important organizational experience.In the extreme version of the ` collective action'' story, the asphalt meantan increase in the level of political consciousness of the slum-dwellers.Others stressed the role played by the particular organization to whichthey belonged:

The asphalting was made possible through the church organizations. Theneighbors organized ra¥es, street fairs, festivals, soccer competitions. Wecollected the money and went to the municipality. That is the way Villa Para-iso was asphalted.

Note that none of them overlooks the role played by the Municipalityin paving the streets, but the emphasis is placed on the collectiveorganization of neighbors in pursuit of a common objective. This` epic'' version also stresses the collective action of neighbors thatresulted in the building of the sewage system and the health centersthat serve the slum. The closer we look, however, the more we realizethis ``epic version'' is not the only one.

J: How was the asphalt made? Was it made by the neighbors?

Coco: No, the municipality did it. It was all made by the municipality. . . .

A suspicious reader may think that they are talking about di¡erentsectors of the same slum, but most of the testimonies about the asphaltwere gathered from people living on the same block. In the same waythat they referred to the same broker and the same party in contrastingways, now they talked about the same asphalt and the same sewagesystem. Yet, as is quite clear, they express it di¡erently. Although theirstories do not di¡er altogether ^ after all, they are talking about thesame ``material'' asphalt ^ the accents, the highlights are posited indi¡erent moments. The ` statist'' narrative of the neighborhood stressesthe mayor or some particular broker as protagonist in the generalimprovement of the living conditions.

The mayor built the health center, paved the streets . . . he did a lot for theneighborhood. He tried to improve the neighborhood.. . . We have alwaysgotten aid from the mayor. . . . We go to see him when we need somethingand, sooner or later, we get an answer [to our demands]. (Cristina)

The neighborhood has improved a lot, and many people thank Rolo [themayor]. The neighbors put up the money to have the paving done, but

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whenever they ask him for pipelines, sooner or later they arrive. He sent themachines to do this paving, although we paid for the renting of the machinesand for the materials.(Monica)

The president of one of the neighborhood associations told me that heand some of his neighbors started to ``struggle'' to have the health-centerbuilt, by ` pressuring'' the mayor. ` They'' built the place. ` They'' paintedit. ` They'' got the ¢rst physician. Lucina, who lives a block from thepresident, has another version of the same health center:

Matilde was the one who started with the health center at the neighborhoodassociation; she brought the nurse and brought the ¢rst desk. Although thepresident of the association is the one in charge, Matilde always ` lends him ahand.''

It is a matter of accents, of course, but the di¡erences can hardly bemissed. The ` epic'' and the ` statist'' histories refer to the same place, tothe same material improvements, but they do so in ways that give acentral place to diverse protagonists. Those who recount the ` statist''narrative are the ones who perceive politics as something that mighthelp them, as something that is continuous. Today's constant presence ofpoliticians in their everyday problem-solving dovetails with a narrativethat gives central place to those same protagonists. It is probablyJosefa who better summarizes this complicity of ` helpful politics'' and` statist neighborhood history'':

Politics helps a lot . . . . I improved my home through politics, I constructed allthe pipelines and the sewage system for my home through politics .. . . Thepaving was done through politics, it was done by Rolo [the mayor]. Themunicipality helps a lot. Politics helps a lot. When we need them to getdrinking-water, they are here.

On the other hand, those who stress the ` collective-e¡ort'' version arethose whose distaste for party politics and whose aversion for localbrokers are explicitly stated. As the president of the neighborhoodassociation (who, according to his own version, was the protagonistof the construction of the health-center) asserts, implicitly linkingMatilde with the distribution of drugs in the villa, ``Matilde's politicsis dirty.''

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Where do di¡erences come from? Embedding voices

Where does the rich variety of narratives, perceptions, and evaluationscome from? What is the importance that these di¡erent voices have inpolitics? The testimonies quoted above belong to people from the samesocial class, and roughly the same age group. They are women and menliving in the same destitute and stigmatized neighborhood; some of them^ holding completely di¡erent views ^ often living half-a-block fromone another. They share similar categorical attributes and they havedi¡erent (sometimes antagonistic) experiences of politics, diverse evalu-ations of the (praised/condemned) actions of the political brokers of theneighborhood, and distinct visions of the history of the neighborhood.

For statistical purposes they are the same people, living in the samepoor neighborhood, below the (same) o¤cial poverty line. With theirstrikingly di¡erent opinions and evaluations, they defy all the classi¢ca-tory attempts that relate categories to beliefs/perceptions. In otherwords, once we take a closer look, the same ` poor people'' living inthe same space hold varied ` points of view.''

The mere fact that there are di¡erent points of view coming fromsimilar social settings leads to an obvious conclusion: there is nocategorical explanation for these viewpoints. Yet, and although imper-fect, and far from clear-cut, there is a sort of pattern to be found inthese viewpoints, a pattern that is rooted not in categories but in the` relational settings,''66 in the ``structural location''67 in which thesevoices are embedded. To all appearances the randomness of voices,evaluations, and narratives is chaotic. However, these ` points of view''are visions taken from di¡erent positions. These disparate locations, inturn, matter for purposes of political mobilization.

As I mentioned above, problem-solving networks consist of a set ofconcentric circles that surround the broker ^ the focal point. Thedi¡erent circles consist of groups of actors who have di¡erential accessto the goods and services distributed by the broker. As we saw, somepeople receive their daily medicine from their brokers. Others haveobtained their jobs through them. Still others get packages of food.Some have routine access to their brokers. Others have an occasionalrelationship to them. Others do not even know them personally.Whatwe have are di¡erent degrees of contact with the broker: a gradient thatgoes from everyday (and in extreme cases, vital) contact, to an inter-mittent relationship, to no relation at all.

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Drawing upon Tilly's model of the polity (and de¢ning the broker as alocal center of power)68 and Bourdieu's notion of doxic experience (asthe recognition of the legitimacy of a social order through the mis-recognition of its arbitrariness),69 we can formulate the followinghypothesis that explains part of the variation found in previous sec-tions: the closer to the broker the resident is, the better will be his/herevaluations of the broker's activities and about local politics; the closer tothe broker, the more the history of the neighborhood will be recounted interms of the decisive in£uence of the state ^ personi¢ed by the broker orthe mayor. In short, proximity to the center of power (self-perceptionas ` protected by'' the broker, and narrative identity as neighbors livingin a barrio that was ``made through politics'') makes the political orderless arbitrary.

For those actors located closer to the broker (in terms of personalcontact, of the type of favors received, of the duration of their relation-ship) Matilde or Juancito constitute their paramount reality. In Schutz'ssense of the word, brokers are part of their everyday, wide-awake,commonsense world. The broker's inner circle is, to paraphrase Schutz'sbrilliant analysis of the world of truth created in the interaction be-tween Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, a common sub-universe ofdiscourse. Established, kept up, and cultivated in the interaction be-tween problem-solvers and problem-holders, both have ` good argumentsfor explaining away discrepancies.'' 70 Within this province of meaningpolitics is helpful, the rallies are a collaboration and a demonstrationof gratitude, brokers ^ as I was repeatedly told ^ ` really care,'' and thehistory of the neighborhood has them as the central protagonists.Within this inner circle there is an uncontested acceptance (doxa) ofproblem-solving through political mediation. Members of this innercircle have such a close relation to the broker's distributive practicesthat a spectatorial point of view on the ` exchange'' is precluded.

Due to its narrative emplotment and its paramount presence, theidentity ^ the experience of a shared social relation71 ^ that is beingforged around the center of power of the problem-solving networkpresents neither signs of active resistance nor subtle indications of` hidden transcripts.''72 And yet, in the slum there is ^ as we saw ^resistance to ``clientelist and manipulative'' practices. These counter-voices are usually located outside the broker's inner circle of strongrelations and, more often than not, take the form of a complaint aboutthe scarce resources delivered by the brokers. ` They [the brokers] givefood to whom they want,'' ` Juancito hands out food once in a while,

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and people need more than that,'' ` they never keep their promises,''` they give things out, but they keep the best for themselves'' are themost commonly heard complaints about the actions of the brokers,reproaches that come from people who are usually disconnected fromthe network.

For those within the inner circle of close relations, domination presentsitself as a paradoxical antinomy.73 If they ` resist'' ^ which is out of thequestion ^ they might lose access to vital resources and thus deepentheir deprived condition. If they assimilate the brokers' world of truth^ as I think they do ^ they are coopted by the institutionalized practicesof clientelism,74 and thus partake in the reproduction of the hierarchicalrelations within the local ¢eld of politics and within the space of theslum.

Reappraising clientelism: Favors, domination, and votes

The act of giving itself assumes very solemn forms.. . . The giver a¡ects anexaggerated modesty. . . . The aim of all this is to display generosity, freedom,and autonomous action, as well as greatness. Yet, all in all, it is mechanismsof obligation, and even of obligation through things, that are called into play.

Marcel Mauss

The distribution of material resources is a necessary, but in itselfinsu¤cient, condition for the smooth operation of the clientelist world.As Robert Merton argued long ago in his analysis of North Americanpolitical machines, ``it is important to note not only that aid is providedbut the manner in which it is provided.''75 The political machine, Mertonpointed out, ` ful¢lls the important social function of humanizing andpersonalizing all manner of assistance to those in need.''76 For the caseat hand, the implications of Merton's (functionalist) interpretation arequite clear: what is being given (and received) and how it is being given(and received) are equally important elements in the operation ofpolitical clientelism.

As we just saw, the type of good distributed matters. Vital resourcesdistributed on a daily or weekly basis (such as food or medicine) andspecial favors that require greater skill or e¡ort to deliver (such aspublic jobs) tend to generate a di¡erent type of relationship betweenbroker and prospective client than general goods (i.e., those goods thatbene¢t the whole community and cannot be granted to a single indi-vidual while being withheld from other residents, such as the paving or

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lighting of a street, or laying sewer mains). Although further investiga-tion is needed of the material basis of clientelism in Argentina, existingresearch shows that it is not the good per se that has the capacity togenerate one or another type of relationship.77

In their everyday ` acts of giving,'' brokers tailor these goods and favorsin special ways. As the extensive literature on the subject insists, trust,78

solidarity, ` hopes for the future,''79 familistic orientations,80 or reci-procity,81 do exist in the relationships established among patrons,brokers, and clients. They are verbalized by both clients and brokerswhenever asked about them. They are remarked time and again inbroker's public speeches. As I showed in another work,82 brokers ofthe Peronist party present their gatekeeping function as a special rela-tionship with the poor, a relationship conveyed in terms of a personaland deep commitment they claim to have to them. Through a ceaselesssymbolic labor intended to deny the logic of self-interest underlyingtheir practices, brokers claim to care for ` their people'' ^ as Juancitoremarks time and again. They say that their actions are based on the` love they feel for them (the poor slum-dwellers),'' as Matilde put itmany times in interviews and public speeches, to the point that bureau-cratic indi¡erence is eliminated. Brokers of the Peronist party presenttheir political work not as a job but as a ``passion for the people''; theirsis ``all sacri¢ce'' to the point of exhaustion in the job. By way of anincessant performative work, brokers attempt to construct their innercircle of followers as a family, the ``Peronist family'' as both Matildeand Juancito call their closest followers. This transpersonal person ofthe Peronist family is (constructed and performed) as a ` world in whichthe ordinary laws of the economy are suspended, a place of trustingand giving .. . a place where interest, in the narrow sense of the pursuitof equivalence in exchanges, is suspended''83 ` We care about them,''the brokers say. ``They ^ the brokers ^ care about us,'' some of theclients say. ` They only care about themselves,'' the ones outside thenetwork say about the brokers.

Yet, ` as the truth of the interaction is never entirely contained in theinteraction,''84 we should look more closely at the e¡ect of this discursiveemphasis on trust, solidarity, reciprocity, caring, and hope. Insofar as thesolutions, services, and protection provided by brokers (inseparablymaterial and symbolic exchanges, in which a thing is given, a favorgranted, and something is communicated) are inclined to legitimatea de facto state of a¡airs that is an unequal balance of power (i.e., adomination network), we can describe them, following Bourdieu, as

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ideological machines. The act of giving, the caring actions of brokers,and the trusting response of their inner circles transform, or attempt totransform, a contingent social relationship ^ the help of someone whois in need ^ into a recognized (i.e., acknowledged as lasting) relation-ship: We solve our problem and, by the way, we recognize Matilde orJuan as our problem-solver. This recognition is at the basis of problem-solving through political mediation.Within an ideological environmentof cooperation, companionship, and solidarity, ties are constructed thatsolidify a particular balance of forces. The more some actors partici-pate as members of the polity, the more they will share the ideology of` caring for the poor,'' of ` social help'' proposed by political leadersand brokers alike, and, in turn, the more doxic the relationship will bewith respect to the asymmetrical bond that ties them to the broker.Paraphrasing Mauss's analysis of the gift in archaic societies, throughfavors ``a hierarchy is [re]established.''85

Between political brokers and their inner circles, giving turns out tobe a way of possessing, to use Bourdieu's apt expression. Brokers, incontrast, do not ` possess'' the outer circle through such acts of discre-tionary giving. Those with intermittent relationships with brokers ob-tain bene¢ts when needed, but ^ as is clear from the harsh criticismsthey receive ^ they sometimes withhold their political loyalty. Thissaid, it is important to highlight that the outer circle is a constitutivepart of the network of relations surrounding the broker. Although theyare not entirely the ` captive electorate'' that progressive politicians andpart of the media see in every recipient of the party favors, thesebene¢ciaries may become at some point members of brokers' innercircles. After all, the distinction between inner and outer circles is ananalytical one. In reality, the line that separates them is porous andmobile; its changes depend on the amount of available resources, onthe number of brokers competing for electoral posts, and on the localpolitical opportunity structure. In other words, as ` potential clients''members of the outer circle are fundamental elements in the networkof problem-solving through personalized political mediation.

What practical consequences do these di¡erent perceptions have forlocal politics? Undoubtedly, the acceptance that members of the innercircle confer to the world of problem-solving through political media-tion constitutes the strength of the brokers' position. Ultimately, it isthe expression of their legitimacy.Yet, at the same time, it represents itsmajor weakness. This legitimacy is the product of a close, everyday,strong relation between problem-holder and problem-solver, a relation

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that has to be constantly upheld, continuously practiced, personally,daily, and directly exercised. This keeping up of the relationship de-pends on the capacity of the brokers to maintain the strength of theseties, something that ^ although not exclusively ^ is contingent upontheir capacity to deliver. As it turns out, this capacity is limited anddependent on other things. It is limited because the broker can get jobs,deliver medicine, do an essential (or founding) favor, and assist some-one as if he or she were part of her family, for a restricted number ofpeople. In the case of the most powerful broker in the slum (Matilde),there are no more than a hundred people who are ^ almost literally ^bound to her through strong ties (among a voting population of morethan seven-thousand people). The capacity of the broker to maintainthe tie is also contingent because it depends on the broker's relationshipto a third party (in this case, the Mayor of Cospito) who provides herwith the goods to be distributed.

Thus, the image of an extended ``captive'' clientelist electorate (stereo-typically portrayed by the media, and sometimes unre£ectivelyadopted by scholars) is, in the case I am analyzing, empirically shaky.Although signi¢cant, the size of brokers' inner circles can hardly accountfor the ``conquest of the vote'' and ``building of electoral consensus'' thatis usually attributed to clientelism. If we are to use the word ``clientelism''we should therefore restrict it to the inner circle of doxic experience.

This does not mean, at any rate, that we should dispose of the study ofpolitical clientelism. Not only because domination and inequality arebeing constantly reproduced within the inner circles but also becausethe strong ties forged within those circles are extremely important inlocal politics. Speci¢cally, the functioning of the inner circle gives animpressive resiliency to the Peronist Party (a party with the ` phoenix-like quality of arising strong and unspoiled from their ashes'' thatMerton detected in the operation of political machines).86 On the onehand, although the number of inner circle members is small, thisamount proves crucial during internal party elections not only as hard-core voters but also as activists and poll-watchers during electoral dayswhen the temptations of fraud are large if the other faction does notsend its own poll-watchers (¢scales). On the other hand, while solvingtheir own survival needs, members of the inner circle solve an organ-izational problem for party leaders, namely, how to keep the partystructure and its members active between elections.87 On the whole,inner circles are cardinal elements in the organizational strength andterritorial penetration of the party.

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Coda: The trope

This article examined the form and functions of problem-solving net-works linked to the Peronist Party in contemporary Buenos Aires. Itreconstructed the di¡erent points of view agents have of the workingsof what some call ` clientelist politics.'' Finally, it grounded those dissim-ilar viewpoints in the relational settings in which agents are located.

After reconstructing these diverse and competing viewpoints and em-bedding them into ongoing problem-solving networks, this work hasshown that the type of relationship that some actors establish with thelocal centers of power explains their (di¡erent) views of local leaders,politics, and history. The ties continuously constructed around localcenters of power freeze a particular balance of forces: the more someactors participate as members of the polity, the less arbitrary they will¢nd their lopsided bond with the broker. This reconstruction alsochallenged the (often taken-for-granted) massive vote-getting capacityof clientelism.

An ethnographic and relational approach to the clients' views showsthat the trope of political clientelism is often the product of whatBourdieu labels a scholastic point of view, an externalist and remoteperspective. This view from afar constructs complex relations and livedexperiences as mere exchange of resources, thus losing sight of thespeci¢city of the clients' and brokers' practices. It seems to me that thispoint of view is (pre)constructed far from where real action lies. It isnot in the boisterous ^ and often pathetic ^ distribution of food pack-ages before a political rally or election, but in the abiding ties, in theenduring webs of relations that politicians establish with their ` clients''and in the ^ sometimes shared (although not cooperatively constructed)^ array of cultural representations.

Acknowledgments

I received assistance for this research from the Joint Committee onLatin American and Carribean Studies of the Social Science ResearchCouncil and the American Council of Learned Societies with fundsprovided by the Ford Foundation. I would like to thank Charles Tilly,Deborah Poole, Elizabeth Jelin, Jose Nun, Robert Gay, ChandraMukerji, Ricardo Sidicaro, Judy Hellman, Lucas Rubinich, and SteveLevitsky for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article.

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Earlier drafts were presented at the Colloquium on Argentine PoliticalCulture at the University of Illinois, Urbana, the General Seminar atthe Casa de Altos Estudios/Fundacion Banco Patricios in Argentina,the Contentious Politics Seminar in Columbia University, and variousseminars at the New School for Social Research and the Universities ofBuenos Aires, General Sarmiento, and Di Tella. I would like to thankthe participants in those forums for their many useful insights, sugges-tions, and criticisms.

Notes

1. This title paraphrases (and this article was greatly inspired by) that of Wacquant'sarticle published in this journal. Lo|« c Wacquant, ` The Pugilistic Point of View: HowBoxers Think and Feel About Their Trade,'' Theory and Society 24/4 (1995): 489^535.

2. See Kenneth Clark, Dark Ghetto: Dilemmas of Social Power (NewYork: Harper &Row, 1965); and Lo|« c Wacquant, ` Three Pernicious Premises in the Study of theAmerican Ghetto,'' International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 21/2(1997): 335^354.

3. See Janice Perlman, The Myth of Marginality (Berkeley: The University of Califor-nia Press, 1976); Alejandro Portes, ` Rationality in the Slum: An Essay in Interpre-tative Sociology,''Comparative Studies in Society and History 14/3 (1972): 268^286.

4. To use the expression of Arjun Appadurai in ``Putting Hierarchy in its Place,''Cultural Anthropology 3/1 (1988) 36^49.

5. Robert Gay, ``Community Organization and Clientelist Politics in ContemporaryBrazil: A Case Study from Suburban Rio de Janeiro,'' International Journal ofUrban and Regional Research 14/4 (1990): 648^665.

6. See, among others, Amparo Menendez-Carrion, La Conquista del Voto en elEcuador: DeVelazco a Roldos (Quito: Corporacion Editora Nacional, 1986); NicosMouzelis, ` On the Concept of Populism: Populist and Clientelist Modes of Incor-poration in Semiperipheral Polities,'' Politics and Society 14/3 (1985): 329^348;Steve Stein, Populism in Peru. The Emergence of the Masses and the Politics ofSocial Control (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1980).

7. See, for example, Carlos De la Torre, ``The Ambiguous Meanings of Latin AmericanPopulism,'' Social Research 59/2 (1990): 385^414.

8. E.g., Nicos Mouzelis, ` On the Concept of Populism: Populist and ClientelistModus of Incorporation in Semiperipheral Polities,'' Politics and Society 14/3(1985): 329^348.

9. See, for example, Guillermo O'Donnell, ``Illusions About Consolidation''; JonathanFox, ` The Di¤cult Transition From Clientelism to Citizenship,'' World Politics 46(1994): 151^184; Richard Gunther, P. Nikiforos Diamandouros, and Hans-Ju« rgenPuhle, ` O'Donnell's `Illusions': A Rejoinder,'' Journal of Democracy 7 (1996): 151^159. See also, Gary Hoskin, ` Democratization in Latin America,'' Latin AmericanReview 32/3 (1997): 209^223.

10. Frances Hagopian, ` The Compromised Consolidation: The Political Class in theBrazilian Transition,'' in Scott Mainwaring, Guillermo O'Donnell, and J. SamuelValenzuela, editors, Issues in Democratic Consolidation. The New South AmericanDemocracies in Comparative Perspective (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame

328

Press, 1992), 243^293; Carlos G. Velez-Iban¬ ez. Rituals of Marginality. Politics,Process, and Culture Change in Urban Central Mexico, 1969^1974 (Berkeley, CA:University of California Press, 1983).

11. Gary Hoskin, ` Democratization in Latin America,'' 217.12. Ruth Cardoso, ``Popular Movements in the Context of Consolidation of Democ-

racy,'' in Arturo Escobar and Sonia Alvarez, editors, The Making of Social Move-ments in Latin America (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1992), 291^302; see alsoCristina Escobar, ` Clientelism and Social Protest: Peasant Politics in NorthernColombia,'' in Luis Roniger and Ayse Gunes-Ayata, editors, Democracy, Clientelism,and Civil Society.

13. See the various essays in Charles Reily, editor, New Paths to Development in LatinAmerica (Boulder, Col.: Lynne Rienner, 1995).

14. David Rock, ` Machine Politics in Buenos Aires and the Argentine Radical Party,1912^1930,'' Journal of Latin American Studies 4 (1972): 233^256; David Rock,Politics in Argentina: the Rise and Fall of Radicalism, 1890^1930 (Cambridge, Mass.:Cambridge University Press, 1975); Guillermo O'Donnell, ` Transitions, Continu-ities and Paradoxes,'' in Mainwaring et al., Issues in Democratic Consolidation, 17^56.

15. Gerrit Burgwald, Struggle of the Poor: Neighborhood Organization and ClientelistPractice in a Quito Squatter Settlement (Amsterdam: CEDLA, 1996).

16. Susan Stoke's study of a low-income neighborhood in Lima, Peru constitutes analmost perfect ethnographically-based illustration of this dichotomy. Susan Stokes,Cultures in Con£ict: Social Movements and the State in Peru (Berkeley: Universityof California Press, 1995). Robert Gay's recent work exposes and dismantles mostof the false and simplistic antinomies that populate the literature on clientelism inLatin America. See ``Rethinking Clientelism: Demands, Discourses and Practicesin Contemporary Brazil,'' forthcoming in European Review of Latin American andCaribbean Research.

17. See, various articles in Arturo Escobar and Sonia Alvarez, The Making of SocialMovements in Latin America.

18. Luis Roniger and Ayse Gunes-Ayata, Democracy, Clientelism, and Civil Society.19. Robert Putnam, Making DemocracyWork (New Jersey: Princeton University Press,

1993).20. In his review of the recent literature on the subject (with special emphasis on Brazil,

but with larger and important implications for the rest of Latin America), RobertGay acknowledges the ` lack of attention to matters of de¢nition'' of the concept ofclientelism. See his ` Rethinking Clientelism.''

21. David Knoke, Political Networks (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press,1990).

22. Larissa Lomnitz, ` Informal Exchange Networks in Formal Systems: ATheoreticalModel,''American Anthropologist 90 (1988): 42^55; Larissa Lomnitz, Como Sobre-viven Los Marginados? (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1975).

23. Georg Simmel, On Individuality and Social Forms (Chicago: The University ofChicago Press, 1971), 133.

24. See, for example, Jonathan Fox, ``The Di¤cult Transition''; Michael Bodeman,` Relations of Production and Class Rule: The Hidden Basis of Patron-Clientage,''in Barry Wellman and S.D. Berkowitz, editors, Social Structures: A NetworkApproach (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Laura Guasti,` Peru: Clientelism and Internal Control,'' in Ste¡en Schmidt et al., editors, Friends,Followers, and Factions: A Reader in Political Clientelism (Berkeley: The Universityof California Press, 1977).

329

25. Luis Roniger, Hierarchy and Trust in Modern Mexico and Brazil (New York:Prager, 1990), 3.

26. Luis Roniger, Hierarchy and Trust in Modern Mexico and Brazil, 4.27. See, for example, Robert Gay's study of local politics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil;

Gerrit Burgwald's of Quito, Ecuador; and Cristina Escobar's of Sucre, Colombia.28. The literature on political clientelism is extensive.When referring to the ` clientelist

impasse,'' in this article, I allude to: Samuel Eisenstadt and Luis Roniger, Patrons,Clients and Friends (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Samuel Eisen-stadt, Power, Trust and Meaning (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995);Luis Roniger, Hierarchy and Trust in Modern Mexico and Brazil (New York:Praeger, 1990), the essays in Luis Roniger and Ayse Gu« nes-Ayata, editors, Democ-racy, Clientelism, and Civil Society (Boulder: Lynne Reinner, 1994); and the classicworks in Ste¡en Schmidt, Laura Guasti, Carl Lande, and James Scott, editors,Friends, Followers, and Factions: A Reader in Political Clientelism (Berkeley: Uni-versity of California Press, 1977); and Ernest Gellner and JohnWaterbury, editors,Patrons and Clients in Mediterranean Societies (London: Duckworth, 1977).

29. Velez-Iban¬ ez' Rituals of Marginality stands as one of the few exceptions to thisgeneral absence of serious treatment of the clients' viewpoints. His ethnographydocuments the di¡erent rituals of marginality (i.e., patron-client relationships,brokerage, political friendships of convenience, and other favor-producing ex-changes) that local elites maintain with a marginalized local population in MexicoCity, paying particular attention to the process of ` entanglement'' of local leadersin the domains of political elites (and the further exclusion of the local population).He not only describes the process by which local leaders of popular organizationsbecome ` enmeshed in the processes of political brokerage and swallowed up in therituals of marginality'' (182), but also focus on the process of cultural changeundergone by marginalized populations after participating in those rituals. Despitethe cooptation of local leaders by political elites,Velez-Iban¬ es observes a process ofcultural change manifested in the emergence of networks of women and men whodisdain those rituals of marginality, becoming ` problematical to the traditionalmeans by which political actions become di¡used in Mexico'' (245). For another,more recent, ethnographic approach to the clients' viewpoints see Burgwald'sStruggle of the Poor.

30. Names of people and places have been changed to ensure anonymity.31. The Conurbano Bonaerense is the area comprising the nineteen districts in Argen-

tina's industrial heartland surrounding the Federal Capital.32. For an ethnographic description of the slum, see my ``This is a Lot like the Bronx,

Isn't It? Lived Experiences of Marginality in Argentina,'' forthcoming in Interna-tional Journal of Urban and Regional Research.

33. Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978);Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-sity Press, 1977).

34. Norbert Elias,What is Sociology? (NewYork: Columbia University Press, 1978).35. ` Unidad Basica'' is the name given to the neighborhood o¤ces of the Peronist

Party in Argentina, hereafter cited as UB.36. See, for example, the (almost denigrating) newspaper and television reports on the

Peronist rally organized on the occassion of the anniversary of Eva Peron's death,on July 26, 1997.

37. Steve Stein, Populism in Peru. The Emergence of the Masses and the Politics of SocialControl (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1980); Michael Conni¡,Urban

330

Politics in Brazil: The Rise of Populism 1925^1945 (Pittsburgh: University of Pitts-burgh Press, 1981); Nicos Mouzelis, ` On the Concept of Populism: Populist andClientelist Modes of Incorporation in Semiperipheral Polities,'' Politics and Society14/3 (1985): 329^348; Luis Roniger, Hierarchy and Trust in Modern Mexico andBrazil (NewYork: Praeger, 1990); Robert Gay, Popular Organization and Democracyin Rio de Janeiro: A Tale of Two Favelas (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,1984); Robert Gay, ` Community organization and clientelist politics in contemporaryBrazil: a case study from suburban Rio de Janeiro,'' International Journal of Urbanand Regional Research 14/4 (1990): 648^666; Antonio Ugalde, ` ContemporaryMexico: From Hacienda to PRI; Political Leadership in a Zapotec Village,'' inRoberto Kern, editor, The Caciques. Oligarchical Politics and the System of Caci-quismo in the Luso-HispanicWorld (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press,1973), 119^134; Wayne Cornelius, ` Contemporary Mexico: A Structural Analysisof Urban Caciquismo,'' in Robert Kern, editor, The Caciques, 135^150; WilliamKornblum, Blue Collar Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974);Thomas Guterbock, Machine Politics in Transition: Party Community in Chicago(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Ira Katznelson, City Trenches: UrbanPolitics and the Patterning of Class in the United States (Chicago: The University ofChicago Press, 1981); David Knoke, Political Networks (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1990); David Rock, ` Machine Politics in Buenos Aires and theArgentine Radical Party, 1912^1930,'' Journal of Latin American Studies 4/2 (1972):233^256; David Rock, Politics in Argentina: The rise and fall of Radicalism, 1890^1930 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975).

38. As was suggested to me by Robert Gay, an important di¡erence between brokers isthat some of them are ` tied'' to a speci¢c political party (or to a speci¢c patron), asis the case with the punteros Peronistas. As Gay shows in Popular Organization andDemocracy, the allegiance of the cabo eleitoral to a speci¢c political party is muchless solid.

39. To use the expression of Marshall Sahlins, ` Poor Man, Rich Man, Big-Man, Chief:Political Types in Melanesia and Polynesia,'' in Ste¡en Schmidt et al., editors,Friends, Followers, and Factions, 222.

40. A. L. Epstein, ``The Network and Urban Social Organization,'' in J. Clyde Mitchell,editor, Social Networks in Urban Situations (Manchester, Manchester UniversityPress, 1969), 77^116.

41. On the di¡erence between ``strong'' and ` weak'' ties (time, intimacy, and emotionalintensity involved in the relationships), see Mark Granovetter, ` The Strength ofWeak Ties,''American Journal of Sociology 78 (1973): 1360^1380.

42. Paraphrasing Durkheim inThe Division of Labor in Society (NewYork: Free Press,1984), we may say that the members of the inner circle are linked to the brokers byties that extend well beyond the brief moment when the act of exchange is beingaccomplished.

43. David Knoke, Political Networks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).44. For the relationship between access to information and network structure, see

Bonnie Erickson, ` The Structure of Ignorance,'' Keynote Address, Sunbelt XVI,International Sunbelt Social Network Conference, Charleston, South Carolina,1996.

45. Roger Gould and Roberto Fernandez, ` Structures of mediation: A formal ap-proach to brokerage in transaction networks,'' Sociological Methodology 89 (1990):91.

46. Manuel Carlos and Bo Anderson, ` Political Brokerage and Network Politics in

331

Mexico: The Case of a Dominance System'' in David Willer and Bo Anderson,editors, Networks, Exchange and Coercion. The Elementary Theory and its Applica-tions (NewYork: Elsevier, 1991), 169^387.

47. By ` actor-centered,'' I do not necessarily mean subjectivistic. For the lack of abetter term, I use this one to refer to approaches to clientelism that take actors'perceptions of clientelist exchanges seriously, and consider the interplay betweenthe structure of exchange networks and the actions ^ individual and collective ^ ofthe actors involved in these webs. E.g., Gerrit Burgwald, Struggle of the Poor;Robert Gay, Popular Organization and Democracy.

48. Cli¡ord Geertz, Local Knowledge (NewYork: Basic Books, 1983).49. Lo|« c Wacquant, ` The Pugilistic Point of View. How Boxers Think and Feel About

Their Trade,'' Theory and Society 24 (1995), 491.50. The destructive consequences of the drug economy have a strong impact on the slum,

which, according to o¤cial information, is the locality with the highest percentageof drug tra¤cking and addiction in Greater Buenos Aires. Drugs are contaminatingthe space of the neighborhood, terrifying and humiliating residents, and makingthem insecure about their own future. Insecurity is the most pervasive feelingamong its inhabitants. Drug-dealers and addicts are a tiny minority of the slumpopulation, but they have taken over the public space of the slum and managed to` set the tone for public life.'' Philippe Bourgois, In Search of Respect (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1995), 10. Or in the residents' own voices: ` The prob-lem here is drugs . . . dealers are killing the kids . . . . (Lucho) This is terrible . . . on thecorner, many kids get together and they smoke .. . weird things .. . you can't takeyour kids to the sidewalk because of the smell. And at night it is terrible, they ¢retheir guns at the police . . . . (Adela) There are a lot of drugs, insecurity.. . . (Juan) Youcan't allow your kids to play on the sidewalk, because everyone is smoking marijuana,doing drugs. . . . (Victoria) There are a lot of kids who have been stealing sincethey're ¢ve or six . . . they act as lookouts, who tell the others if the police come.. . .''(Jose¢na) Drug-tra¤cking and diverse addictions (mainly alcohol, marijuana, andcocaine) are having devastating consequences on the life-world of slum-inhabitants.Their feelings about young dealers and consumers not only point to the insecuritythey feel, their fear of being mugged or assaulted, but also to the abandonment andthe impotence they experience.Violence is becoming, to quote Elias, an ` unavoid-able and everyday event'' in the slum, pervading ``the whole atmosphere of thisunpredictable and insecure life,'' Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process (Oxford:Blackwell, 1994), 448^449. For an argument concerning the generalization of vio-lence in Latin American shantytowns, see Paulo Pinheiro, ` Democracies WithoutCitizenship,''Nacla XXX/2 (1996): 17^23.

51. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, 38.52. Ibid.53. My point here is not to deny the much noted existence of strategic calculations on

the part of clients but to stress the fact that these calculations are predicated uponthe reciprocal recognition of actors as repeated actors. Individual interest max-imization within the speci¢c social world of clientelism (to be carefully distin-guished from ` resistance'' to clientelist manipulation) grows out of the mutualrecognition between clients and brokers crafted within inner circles. In this sense,we can say that brokers' closest followers form a ``circle of recognition'' that hindersa detached point of view on the relationship. See Alessandro Pizzorno, ` On theIndividualistic Theory of Social Order.'' In Pierre Bourdieu and James Coleman,editors, Social Theory for a Changing Society (Boulder:Westview Press, 1991).

332

54. Lo|« c Wacquant perceptively analyzes the interplay between negative determinantsand positive attractions for the case of boxing in the ``Black ghetto.'' In `A SacredWeapon. Bodily Capital and Bodily Labor among Professional Boxers,'' in CherylCole, John Loy, and Michael A. Messner, editors, Exercising Power: Making theRemaking the Body (Albany: State University of NewYork Press).

55. Pierre Bourdieu, ``Understanding,'' Theory, Culture and Society 13/2 (1996): 34.56. See Karen E. Paige and Je¡ery M. Paige, The Politics of Reproductive Ritual

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981).57. The residents of Villa Paraiso who attend these rallies not only share a network of

relationships and a category (they are poor people living in the same barrio) butalso claim a common ^ although multifarious ^ political identity: they de¢nethemselves as Peronists and vote for the Peronist party. Thereby the rallies are(also) an expression of a deep-seated and resilient political identity: that of ` beingPeronist.'' Further research is needed on the diverse ways in which problem-solvingnetworks symbolically reproduce and recon¢gure the multiple Peronist identitiesembedded in this web of relations.

58. Wacquant, ` The Pugilistic Point of View.''59. The charge against the ` political use'' of food programs has been noted in other

popular barrios in Argentina; see, for example, Laura Golbert, ``La asistenciaalimentaria: Un nuevo problema para los Argentinos,'' in Susana Lumi, LauraGolbert, Emilio Tenti Fanfani, editors, La Mano Izquierda del Estado. La asistenciasocial segun los bene¢ciarios (Buenos Aires: Min¬ o y Davila, 1992).

60. A right, according to Tilly, is an ` enforceable claim, the reciprocal of obligations,''Charles Tilly, ` Democracy is a Lake,'' in Roads from Past to Future (Maryland:Rowman & Little¢eld, 1997), 198. Rights are ` enforceable claims on the delivery ofgoods, services, or protections by speci¢c others. Rights exist when one party cane¡ectively insist that another deliver goods, services, or protections, and thirdparties will act to reinforce (or at least not to hinder) their delivery.'' When the` object of claims is a state or its agent and the successful claimant quali¢es bysimple membership in a broad category of persons subject to the state's jurisdic-tion,'' those claims ^ or, entitlements ^ become citizenship rights. Charles Tilly,` Where do Rights Come From?'' Center for the Study of Social Change, NewSchool for Social Research.Working Paper 98 (July 1990), 1.

61. Other works have shown that, in many other lower-class neighborhoods of Con-urbano Bonaerense, politics is experienced as something distant, linked to delusionand trickery, especially among the youth. The distribution of drugs among youthgroups by local politicians in poor neighborhoods has also been noted as quitegeneralized. See, for example, Silvia Kuasn¬ osky and Dalia Szulik, ``Desde losmargenes de la juventud,'' in Mario Margulis, editor, La juventud es mas que unapalabra (Buenos Aires: Biblos, 1996). The participation in political rallies andsoccer barras bravas has proven to be a free source of drugs (marijuana andcocaine) and alcohol for many youngsters.

62. Although I do not agree with her understanding of Peronist clientelist practices,additional evidence of distribution of goods as a means of ` purchasing votes'' canbe found in Nancy Powers, ` Popular Discourse about Politics and Democracy inArgentina,'' paper delivered at the Latin American Studies Association Conference,September, 1995.

63. See, for example, Albert Hirschman, Getting Ahead Collectively: Grassroots Expe-riences in Latin America (NewYork: Pergamon Press), Beatriz de Heredia, ` Politica,Familia y Comunidad,'' paper delivered at the Encuentro Internacional de Antro-polog|a, IDES, Buenos Aires, August, 1996.

333

64. William Foote Whyte, Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an ItalianSlum (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1943).

65. Launched almost ten years ago, this state-funded program intended to strengthencommunity organization in poor neighborhoods through the subsidized developmentof productive micro-enterprises. In the slum, some of the funds of the program werecaptured by Peronist brokers, becoming an extra source for their inner circles.

66. Margaret Somers, ` The Narrative Constitution of Identity: A Relational and Net-work Approach,'' Theory and Society 23 (1994): 605^649.

67. Wacquant, ` The Pugillistic Point of View.''68. Tilly, FromMobilization to Revolution.69. Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice.70. Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers (The Hague: Martinus Nijho¡, 1962), 143.71. Charles Tilly, ` Political Identities,'' Working Paper 212 (Center for Studies of Social

Change, New School for Social Research, 1995).72. To use James Scott's expression from Domination and the Arts of Resistance.

HiddenTranscripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).73. See Paul Willis, Learning to Labor (NewYork: Columbia University Press, 1983).74. The dominated, as Bourdieu constantly notes, ` are very often condemned to such

dilemmas, to choices between two solutions which, each from a certain standpoint,are equally bad ones,'' Pierre Bourdieu and Lo|« cWacquant, An Invitation to Re£exiveSociology (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 82.

75. Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe, Ill.: The FreePress, 1949), 74.

76. Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure, 74.77. See Thomas Guterbock, Machine Politics in Transition.78. Luis Roniger, Hierarchy and Trust.79. Ayse Gu« nes-Ayata, ` Clientelism: Premodern, Modern, Postmodern'' in Roniger

and Gu« nes-Ayata, Democracy, Clientelism and Civil Society.80. V. Tellis-Novak, ` Power and Solidarity: Clientage in Domestic Service,'' Current

Anthropology 24/1 (1983): 67^69.81. James Scott, ` Political Clientelism: A Bibliographical Essay,'' in Ste¡en Schmidt et

al., Friends, Followers, and Factions; James Scott and Benedict J. Kerkvliet, ` HowTraditional Rural Patrons Lose Legitimacy: A Theory with Special Reference toSoutheast Asia,'' in Ste¡en Schmidt et al., Friends, Followers, and Factions.

82. See my ` Performing Evita. A Tale of Two Peronist Women,'' forthcoming inJournal of Contemporary Ethnography.

83. Pierre Bourdieu, ` On the Family as a Realized Category,'' Theory, Culture andSociety 13/3 (1996): 20.

84. Bourdieu, Outline, of a Theory of Practice, 81.85. Marcel Mauss,The Gift, 74.86. Robert Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure, 71.87. See Steve Levitsky, ` Institutionalization and Peronism,'' Party Politics 4/1 (1998):

77^92.

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