"Food and social conflict in the city of Córdoba since the Argentine Crisis of 2001 and after: research breakthroughs"

EYNARD, MARTIN

Dublin

Congreso; Latin America Congress Ireland (LACI 2013); 2013

University College Dublin

In the recent years, in Argentina we have witnessed a new phenomenon: the existence of collective actions designed to make visible the conflicts over food. These actions have taken various forms, including demands for food social programs to the State, pickets to supermarkets, protests because of popular canteens closures, among others. Sociologically, the lack of food can be understood as a limit of compatibility of the system, while threatening, in different ways and intensities, the material reproduction of the body. The demand for food, in turn, indicates and implies a network of conflicts, that relationally structure society at a given time and space. Methodologically, we assume a qualitative approach, blended with quantitative data. The data collection instruments combines: semi-structured in-depth individual and group interviews and observation, in one hand, and a hemerographic data base of conflicts around the food issue constructed analyzing the largest newspaper in the city of Cordoba (?La Voz del Interior?), on the other. The central objective of this communication is to outline a series of research breakthroughs for the questions about what characteristics took the conflicts related with the food issue in the city of Cordoba between 2001 and 2007, and how was the impact of this phenomenon on the identity of the subjects involved in such conflicts.