Being in the Interstices and Existing in the Margins: Agency and State in the Triple Frontier

BRIGIDA RENOLDI

Politics, Culture and Economy in Popular Practices in the Americas

Peter Lang

Lugar: New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, Oxford, Wien; Año: 2016; p. 209 - 234

In this article, I will describe how people act, working between legality and illegality, passing legal goods without making customs declarations, or even illegal merchandise, in the area of the frontiers of Brazil, Paraguay, and Ar- gentina. The legal/illegal binomial, made explicit in codes and regulations, produces a moral boundary between the acceptable and unacceptable from the point of view of the State. Describing the type of activities which these people undertake and the conditions in which they realize them, makes clear the correlations which put in question that border as well as the mode in which they produce dynamics in daily life which ?make? the state in every movement and decision. Thus, looking at these phenomena from the native perspective, the entire network linking things, places, people, areas, and en- vironments, enables us to recognize that behind every initiative there exists a practical reformulation of the ideal terms that define the State, not just a form of disobedience. By opting for this perspective, we suspend such judgments that see a flaw in the incongruity between what the State should be and what the state is, judgments that are sustained, in the last instance, in the reification of the problematic dualism of the concepts of state/society.It should be pointed out that of all the issues discussed here, that of the dynamics of everyday life, is of exceptional importance. We could say that these dynamics rest on skills and practices learned in the coexistence fostered in the physical and cultural environment of the border zone. I start from the idea that on their existential plane the forms of life challenge, put pressure on, have an impact on, and reinvent principles which, from the point of view of the social theories, are sometimes considered to be ones of subordination, oppression, and control. Of the myriad ways in which people inhabit the border, some are characteristic of certain types of activity, and it could be said that they are inscribed in the debate over the definition of ?popular culture.? I will not enter here into the conceptual discussion which would deal with the terms ?culture? and ?popular,? nor the oppositions and implications of class and hierarchy which arise from them when combined, something which has already been analyzed in history and anthropology (Wagner, Alabarces, 2012; Bakhtin, 1987; García Canclini, 1982, 1990; Bourdieu, 1979; Lewis, 1961; Certeau et al., 1989; Vovelle, 1991); some reviews inform us about the debate (Domingues, 2011; Abreu, 2003). Although not explicitly included in the central idea that weaves together the contributions to this book, it is possible that the descriptions contained here can be used for rethinking the ideas of subordination and power, which we sometimes predefine, in the light of observations of how people create, transit, and inhabit places, whether they are ordinary citizens or agents of the state.