Aspirations for the future, making a living and production of the commons from the popular economy in Argentina

MARIA INES FERNANDEZ ALVAREZ

Belfast

Conferencia; 17th EASA Biennial Conference Transformation, Hope and the Commons; 2022

European Association of Social Anthropology

The study of aspirations and expectations for the future has gained attention in the analysis of the dynamics of contemporary capitalism, especially in relation to neoliberal and crisis processes, from an ethnographic perspective that focuses on everyday experience. This paper proposes an analysis of how aspirations and projections to the future shape processes of dispute around making a living that are embedded in a broader dynamics of production of the commons. My analysis is based on a collaborative research developed with cooperatives of street vendors in Argentina that are part of the Unión de Trabajadores y Trabajadoras de la Economía Popular (UTEP). These organizations carry out a process of dispute for rights and improvements in the living conditions of those who are part of the popular economy that can be understood as a process of production of the commons that combines modalities of collective appropriation of spaces and resources with the production of collective forms of care and well-being. From an ethnographic perspective of the common that interrogates the complex overlaps with the logics of exchange and market value, I explore the link between aspirations for the future and forms of value production involved in making a living. I ask how this process of production of the common is embedded in dynamics of capital accumulation as it contests notions of labor and well-being(s) involved in the ways of making a living that are produced in growing contexts of precariousness and dispossession that dispute the socially and legally enabled ways of producing life.