Moralizing project to govern the social. Extra judicial mediation programs in Córdoba, Argentina. A study case.

PAULA CECILIA MUSSETTA

Council on Latin American and Iberian Studies

Workshop; Lectures and Conferences. Fall 2006; 2006

Although alternative methods to formal justice for the resolution of conflicts -mediation - in their origin seek to solve the problem of the operation of judicial system, parallelly to this objective they develop normative arguments that postulate the necessity to bond morally the society throw consolidation of new modalities conflict handling, which implies a cultural change. In Cordoba province, Argentina, this aim appears as the most important end of mediation to the point that in Cordoba mediation is associated to the purpose of constitution of a new paradigm of social coexistence. The other side of this task, assumed and promoted by the state, it is the vision that state has about citizenship: it is qualified as imperfect, unable to generate for itself the necessary resources to make effective a model of an ideal society. This way, it shapes a peculiar way of governing the social. This work studies this dynamic of social intervention and defines it as purpose of social moralization. We sustain that this project is part of a logic in which the state intervenes society with the purpose of generating ideal citizens and ideal societies. That is to say, the state attributed as own the responsibility for the type of societies that are generated. At the same time, this responsibility translates into political projects as well as institutional devices, to guide the social forces toward the feasibility of a model idea society. Mediation is an illustrative case of this situation. In this document we will focus on three dimensions that concern to this investigation problem: - a state theory that contributes the analytic tools to allow us to understand the logic with which states “thinks” of its society; - the structure of the moral code;. theoretical and operative difficulties this way of political operation generates.