Labour Structure and Control Devices in the Automotive Industry: The “toyotism” as a complex rationalization system

Diego ALVAREZ NEWMAN

The following article intends to examine the concept of “toyotism” based on the description and analysis of the Toyota Production System (TPS) and its´ principles and strategies application.

We infer the TPS as a complex system which rationalizes both the production and the workers. This system works through the implementation of diverse technical and social devices. The TPS postulates certain basic principles aiming a continuous productivity and quality improvement, applying a strategic configuration to intervene in the control of the factory´s time and space as well as in the regulation of rhythms, movements and worker´s values. These devices do not only operate as production and  productivity watchers, but also function as workforce flexibilization and eligibility union tools to minimize the conflict. Train to count on workers who are involved in the company goals and with an union which can relate to the Toyota philosophy, represents a major productivity factor in the sense that the continuous improvement cycle won´t be affected.

Keywords: Toyotism, Control Devices, Rationalization, Flexibilization, Continuous Improvement. 

Migrant worlds. Itineraries in the cycles of life and work

Mónica BENDINI, Martha RADONICH y Norma STEIMBREGER

Seasonal temporary workers rebuilding migration projects every year arrive to fruit harvest in the valleys of Rio Negro. To this end, we characterize the spaces of life and work as migration contexts, their family histories and occupational trajectories. The analytical perspective is to visualize them from family social reproduction strategies and to focus on migration projects as one of its own elements. This study can be enrolled in the line of empirical research and theoretical conceptualization on the territorial mobility of workers and the expansion of capital in export agricultural regions. After successive approximations by extensive, typological and comparative procedures, we understand that the study could be enriched by the incorporation of social insights on two histories of life, paradigmatic it is one by its points of anchorage between family history and agrarian social history but both are representative of migratory harvest flows and involve two or three generations of workers. In them, we analyze the mutual relations between labor trajectories, space itineraries and family dynamics. We deepen in vital  and occupational trajectories in their historical travesties and space itineraries. Critical perspective and empirical data redefine seasonal work in agriculture and the character that migration process assumes in dynamic regions of dependent capitalism. Workers movements show different levels of territories but also express paradoxical modernization with persistence of marginalization in subalternization.

Keywords: seasonal farm worker, export fruiticulture, migration project, social reproduction strategies

Humorous representation in Argentina´s leading newspaper in view of  the "resurgence" of  the union actor

Vanesa COSCIA  y Mercedes MOGLIA

The aim of the following article is to analyse the purpose of graphic humour when used in political journalism for the coverage of conflicts related to trade unions in the period 2004-2007. During Kirchner’s government trade unions became a central political and social actor favoured by collective bargaining, a gradual recovery of employment and struggles for salary increments as well as tripartite agreements between government, industry and traditional union organizations.

The study focuses on the case of Clarín, taking into account the place of privilege both as a political and economic actor in the national scene. This journal is part of and constitutes the cornerstone of the Grupo Clarín, a holding company that is the major national multimedia control group of newspapers and magazines, television licensing, Internet, radio stations and producers, among others.

The idea of analysing the mass media representations of the trade union force focalizing on the humorous representations that appear in political cartoons and jokes evolves from the belief that the political humour functions as a device that “enchants the unaware addressee, who naively accepts many of the premises hidden in the message.” (Mazzei 1997:88). The question that guided the research is how humour works in the mass media narratives, shaping and exploiting certain common sense notions around issues related to historical matters of the national trade union.

Key words: representations, mass media, trade unions, labor conflicts, graphic humour.

From the weekly to the book.

The writing of Rodolfo Walsh’s Rosendo as the construction of the vandorismo in the Argentina of broken Peronism

Darío DAWYD

In the present article we reconstructed Rodolfo Walsh’s research about the death of Rosendo García, Domingo Blajaquis and Juan Zalazar that he published in seven notes in the weekly CGT between May and June in 1968. Those notes are compare with his later publication of the research as a the book ¿Quien mató a Rosendo? in May, 1969. We try to emphasize the differences between both formats and contexts because those differences allow as to relieve the critical political context in which they took place. The article underline of the worst approached investigations of Walsh and put it in its context of the meanings of the division of the CGT and the Peronism, considering that Walsh had taken again his political militancy and had make his first links with one of the fractions of the Peronism in dispute.

Keywords: Rodolfo Walsh, Rosendo García, peronism, vandorismo, unionism

Agrarian change and new rurality: Kaleidoscope of soya expansion

in the Pampa region

Carla GRAS

In the last decades, and in the framework of the thesis on the configuration of a new rurality, villages and small towns have drawn the attention of the social sciences. Rurality is defined as increasingly polysemic, where the previous boundaries between rurality and agriculture have redefined. Our interest in the rural villages of the Pampa region stands on this understanding, and introduces another key process related to the deep changes caused by the development of a new model of agricultural production, which involved a dynamic of “winners” and “losers”.

The existence of population living in rural towns and villages that has no relationship with the agriculture and of an agricultural sector profoundly changed are two main driven forces whose consequences on rurality we aim to understand. We are interested in exploring how this differentiation between “winners” and “losers” has affected the social positions held by farmers in local communities as well as their importance in local population and economy.  We explore the cultural distinctions and tensions regarding social integration and the extent in which it departs from the idea of community defined by the relative similarity or homogeneity and the stability of its components.

Key words: rurality, agricultural model, social differentiation

Worrk-Family Balance, Family Support, Parental Self Efficacy and Perceived Family Functioning in a Chilean Public Workers

Elizabeth Riquelme Orellana

 Aransazú Rojas Habibe

Andrés Jiménez Figueroa

It is analyzed the relationship between work-family balance, family support, parental self-efficacy and public officials, given the differences between men and women. A 181 professional staff We applied three instruments measuring variables related. It is noted that there were significant differences in the level of work-family balance among men and women, giving women a better balance. On the other hand there was no difference in family support, parental self-efficacy and family functioning. Regarding the relationship between these variables was found a statistically significant relationship between family support and parental self-efficacy (r =- 0.333, p <0.01) between family support and family functioning (r = 0.734, p <0.01), work-family balance and parental self-efficacy (r = 0.275, p<0.01) and between parental efficacy and family functioning (r =-0.276, P <0.01).

Keywords: work-family balance, family support, parental self-efficacy and family functioning.

The Energy Absorption in Call Centers: Between Wrecked Bodies

and Leadership Performance

María Inés LANDA

Leonardo G. MARENGO

In this article we propose the study, from a “social body perspective”, of the socio-productive universe of Call Centers, focusing on the dynamics of human energy metabolism that is produced in this emerging field. Consequently, we have organized the argumentation strategy in two moments: Firstly, we present the conceptual framework chosen for the analysis of a particular case: the telephone company Movistar in Argentina. Secondly, we describe the diferential energy dispositions, physical and social, that reveal the agents’ framework of the Call Center object of study: telephone operator, client, company and leaders. We conclude that the energy management model in Call Centers implements an original and specific model of selection and use of working bodies. Paradoxically, in the analyzed business scenes the main technological innovation is not a machine but a human technology, a body performance.

Keywords: Call Centers, work, body, energy metabolism, company, flexible capitalism.

The South American trade union in the lost decade:

particularities of the Brazilian case

Juan Bautista LUCCA

The interest of this paper is to analize, in the South American context during the nineties,  the Trade-Union representation. We want to recognize the similarities in the South American  cases, in order to discover the specificity of the Brazilian case, one of the most  particular contrast trade union situation in  Latin American.

Key Words: Trade Union, South America, 1990's, Brazil.

The consulting industry and the constitution of the managerial elite of large Argentinean companies

Florencia LUCI

The purpose of this article is to analyze the role adopted by the consulting industry in the constitution of the managerial elite of large companies in Argentina. The goal is to show that the consulting firms have an outstanding role in the organizational processes of large Argentinean companies. They often participate directly in the leader’s selection process - being in charged of the recruitment tests, evaluation, and promotion- as well as in the constitution of sociability relations that generate unequal possibilities of professional career.

Keywords: consulting firms, managerial elite, large companies.

The Second Vatican Council and its impact

on argentinian Episcopal field

Paulo MARGARIA

This article examines the impact that Second Vatican Council had on argentinian Catholic Church, with special emphasis on the Bishops field, from a socio-religious perspective that seeks to explain the complexity of Catholic field. Therefore, it seems appropriate to use the Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of "field". We believe that talk about "religious field" allows us to conceive Catholicism as a dynamic social space spanned by constant conflicts and struggles carried out by groups of agents who tried to dominate the field. Again, this allows us to characterize the positions that the Council emphasized in the Argentine Catholicism, acting as a propellant and legitimizing ideas and conflicts that existed previously.

Key words: religious field, Second Vatican Council, Argentinean Catholic Church, conflicts and struggles for domination.

About occupational categories in collective bargaining and its changes

during the last decades

Clara MARTICORENA

This paper analyses the structure and the criteria of definition of occupational categories in collective agreements from selected manufacturing activities along different periods, since 1975. In particular, we aim to analyse the way in which the advance of capital against labour in the last decades of the 20th century expressed in the definition of occupational categories in collective agreements.

This analysis allows us to recognize processes of exclusion of categories, reduction in the number of categories, and redefinition of the same ones. Even when the changes in occupational categories were neither homogeneous nor linear, those processes started during the 90’s have great relevance today.

Key words: Occupational categories - Collective bargaining - Manufacturing industry

The workers and the notion of "seguridad competente"

Hernán M. PALERMO

Our purpose in this article is to quiestioning new labour management logics and its incidence in workers' experience shaping. We specially point to some interesting trends from our research process, situated in YPF (Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales), the national petroleum company which has been privatized and owned by spanish group Repsol. We focus out our attentiion on one of main management strategies which is labour security policies, from an ethnographical perspective. This way, we point out discipline meaning that concerns to the notion of "seguridad competente" and its consequences over workers' practices and meanings.

Keywords: workers - "seguridad competente" - manegement policies -  competences – discipline.

Some comments on the relation between growth and emplyment in Argentina over the past few years
 

Germán PINAZO

The devaluation of the peso in 2002 has initiated a process of uninterrupted growth that has no precedents in our recent history. Moreover, this process shows some special characteristics that have been an object of a prolific discussion. The aim of this paper is to contribute to that discussion. Making use of a particular characterization of the argentinian economic structure, we pretend to collaborate not only to the analysis of its recent performance, but, specifically, to the study of the tension that seems to exist between growth, empleoyment and purchasing power of the salary.

Key words:  Argentinian economy, structural heterogeneity, industry, employment, distribution.

Democracy in unions argentine?

An analysis about their conditions and possibilities

 Luisina P. RADICIOTTI

This paper proposes a theoretical analysis about on some of the factors related with the thematic of democracy in unions. We wonder if there is a process of democratization in the Argentine unions (Bensusán, 2000) for reflect about several aspects linked to a complex field of study that presents  scanty empirical research. In this sense, different questions guide our exploratory work to debate about the opportunities and obstacles that present in union democracy in Argentina. For that, we analized varied theoretical and interpretive perspectives.

Keywords: union democracy; argentine trade unionism.

Breakthrougs and subjectivities:

An approach to the perspectives of labor paths

  María Eugenia ROBERTI

The aim of the present work is to study the theoretical contributions which are given by the focus on labor paths to understand the integration of heterogeneous courses, unpredictable and discontinuous, which are developed through the subjects working lives. From this point, we perform a critical thought together with a theoretical systematization of those research works which can help us understand how working biographies are built up in a context of intermittence and uncertainty. The chosen perspective gives to the social analysis the possibility to analyze these new phenomena from their analytical complexity, since it let comprehend the objective and subjective dimensions considering their temporal articulation.

Keywords: Youth, Job placement, Transition to adulthood, Deinstitutionalization of life course, Labor path.

Patterns of occupational homogamy in Argentina: 2007-2008

Santiago RODRÍGUEZ

Homogamy is one of the main mechanisms for the reproduction of social structure. It refers to the degree on which members of a society marry or bind with equals in terms of important socioeconomic characteristics, such as social class. It is implied that the lowest the homogamy index -i.e., a highest amount of unions between people of different social classes-, the more open is a society and the less relevant are barriers between different groups. In addition, homogamy contributes to reproduce social inequality, given than it favors the differential transmission of economic, social and cultural resources from one generation to another.
The aim of this paper is to analyze patterns of occupational homogamy / heterogamy in legal and consensual couples living in Argentina in 2007-2008.

A quantitative methodological strategy it is used, employing descriptive and inferential statistical techniques. Data is taken from a survey on Stratification and social mobility, applied to a probability sample on a national level (2007-2008) by Centro de Estudios de Opinión Pública - Universidad de Buenos Aires.

The main findings suggest that the selection between spouses is not at random and that their own social class is a relevant factor in couple formation. Occupational homogamy, in terms of social class, increases between younger couples.

Key words: marital unions, occupational homogamy, occupational heterogamy and social structure reproduction.

Constitution and use of labour force: the relations between education and the collective worker

Cecilia ROSSI

The argument exposed util now was intended to analize in a critical way the relation between work and its more and more complex relation with education, in different aspects. Particularly considering education as a contribution to the constitution of labour power and, between living work and education (or speeking precisely, pedagogical practices) in work places. It was in this aspect that the constitution of the colective worker and the need for considering in a more extended way the notion of cooperation was suggested as the axis of the formulation.

Key words: Labour force, labour, education, cooperation, collective worker.

Labour in clothing industry: a rapprochement to the Argentine case

Paula D. SALGADO

Clothing industry has shown erratic behavior in recent decades, characterized by a sharp reduction from the nineties and a subsequent intensive growth that followed the economic recovery after the 2001 Economic Crisis. These trends imply radical changes both in the production process and in the working conditions.

In this paper we analyze the factors that affect the fluctuations in garment industry and the main results for workers of the sector. Fundamentally, the growth of the extremely precarious employment of unregistered immigrants, recruited through networks of human trafficking. It also outlines the institutional intervention –of both union and government- analyzing their strengths and limitations for the eradication of this form of labor exploitation.

Keywords: clothing industry, labour, human trafficking, union representation.

Social Policies and nutritional needs. Some conceptual elements

Luis Hernán SANTARSIERO

The aime of this article is describe  differents perspectives on social policies and the food needs to rescue the context in which they were emerging in the the state matrix by taking some regional examples, centrally in Argentina. This will characterize the different modalities for which they were passing the food assistance programs in the care of vulnerable populations and the state's response to security and social rights with respect to access to food.

Keywords: food supplies, food needs, social policies.

Cultural studies, Historiography and the subaltern sectors

 María Mercedes TENTI

The purpose of this work is to research the relationship between  Cultural Studies and Historiography, especially the ways in which the latter approaches the problem of the subaltern sectors. A wide band of social actors do not become visible in most historiographical works, contributing to ratify preconceived images of traditional positions. Currents emerging in last decades emphasize these new approaches. The aproaches of a 'new history' are nourished of interdisciplinary contributions. At the end of last century, new actors - that were not visible in the field of historiográphy - began to emerge 'from below', highlighting underlying cultural relativism in historical accounts. Faced with the emergence of these areas of interest, the main problem faced by historians  are sources, on the one hand, and  methodology, for other one. Regarding the first, new interpretations and questioning the official documentation can bring forth the word of the subaltern. While we should not lose sight that these documents do not contain the direct voice of the protagonists-mediated clerk-which can be explained within the text, in context. The oral testimony of the actors and of his environment constitutes also an important contribution to discover the past of those that do not appear in the official records. The oral tradition began to occupy a relevant space at the moment of uncovering the past of of groups that do not have built-in the tradition of the written culture. The photographic and audio-visual records, the letters of popular song, the novels and the cinematograph, offer other sources that us allow to bring over to the subalternity, across new methodologies contributed by the interdisciplinary work.

Key words: subaltern subjet, cultural studies, historiography, social actors, subaltern study

The YPF privatization in Comodoro Rivadavia. Some social and laboral characteristics and consequences

Fernanda TORRES

The objective of this article is to analyze the process of privatization of the company YPF in the San Jorge Gulf, more specifically in the Comodoro Rivadavia area, Province of Chubut. I am interested in studying the social consequences of this privatization in terms of the labour market, but also paying attention to the cultural, social, and political aspects that were also altered. 

First, I will present a brief description and analysis of the characteristics of the oil company's privatization, and of the peculiar production conditions it had in the Patagonian region.

Then, I will stop on the different labor strategies which originated after the sale of the company, which are related to proposals of labor rehabilitation or of reconfiguration of the labor market structure, and on their results. 

Finally, I am interested in introducing the topic of the "indirect" consequences of the reconfiguration of the main economic company of the region, i.e. the redefinition of the main variables of the social, political, cultural, and economical life of the area. I am particularly interested in analyzing whether a change in the concept of "work" can be observed, and also the territorial displacements which occurred in the City of Comodoro and its area of influence. This analysis will be carried through the study of an unemployed people's movement of the region: "Coordinadora de Trabajadores Desocupados - Anibal Verón."

Keywords: YPF privatization- Comodoro Rivadavia- work- territory- unemployed people's movement.
 

Union Statutes, the forgotten source. The case of the structures of trade union employees.

 Paula ABAL MEDINA

 The union statutes, together with the Trade Unions Act,  define the dynamics of functioning and the methods of participation and decision to the interior of the union structures. They are fundamental pieces of the internal organization. In the present work there are analyzed the successive reforms registered by the bylaws corresponding to the Union of Employees of Trade of Lanús And Avellaneda in order to define the principal features of the union structure of the region and his relations with the federation.
Key words: unionism, statutes, delegates, internal organization hospitalizes.

Contributions of Alfred Schutz's social theory
to think politics and collective action

 Mariela Hemilse ACEVEDO

Starting from the question about which aspects of the social phenomenology of Alfred Schutz may be relevant to thinking about politics and collective action, interest in these pages will be on exposing the proposals of Schutz's place of systems of relevance and symbolic representations in the relationship between man and the world in social and political order, and noted the contributions of these approaches to the reflection on the collective action and politics. For this, it briefly describes some formulations of the theory schutzeana knowledge of the world, his theory of the references apresentacionales and symbolization, as well as references to the role of the structures of significance in the interpretation of the world and action, and it examines how these developments of the theory of Schutz are taken up by Ilja Srubar and Daniel Cefaï to think politics.
Keywords: social meanings - symbolism - a system of relevance - politics - collective action

The access to the migrant work in Santiago del Estero and Misiones:
a focus on the logic of the actors

 Alfonsina ALBERTI y María José MARTINEZ

The present article tries to cross through speech of the actors involved in the labor migration, as they are those questions that do to the problematic one in the access to this type of work. For which they are taken like referring empiricists to two different cases; the santiagueños workers who move towards the production of potatoes in the south of the province of Buenos Aires and Córdoba and the working misioneros who go towards the forest activity towards the northeast of the province de Entre Ríos and the south of the Corrientes. In this sense the perception is important from the workers in relation to two different activities as far as its particular characteristics that nevertheless they share a point common that is the space displacement related to the access to the work.
Keywords: labor migration, access to the work, Santiago del Estero, Misiones, perspective of the actor.

Approaches concerning collective bargaining on convertibility. Contributions to ask at the present time

 Cecilia ANIGSTEIN

At present, the guideline was re-established the " traditional guideline " of collective bargaining after a parenthesis limited by the regime of convertibility? Or, does it follow in force the guideline of collective bargaining installed in the decade of the nineties?. These questions claim a review of the argumentations that were articulated concerning the changes in the bosses of the collective bargaining during the decade of the nineties and of his conceptual premises. The intention is to construct a point of conceptual item that a boarding of the present enables us, but exempt, at least warned of some normative perspectives.
Key words: collective bargaining, syndicalism, convertibility 

Employability and beneficiaries of the Training and Employment Insurance in Mar del Plata

 Ana Julia ATUCHAy María Eugenia LABRUNÉE

This paper is aimed to analyze whether the participation of beneficiaries in the Training and Employment Insurance improved their employability. In particular, the relationship between training and employment of this group, as an approach to measuring the effect of this labor market policy in Mar del Plata, will be examined.
The information come from the "Survey of Informality and Beneficiaries of Social Programs" collected in Mar del Plata, October 2009, by the Labour Studies Group, School of Economics and Social Sciences at the Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata as part of a partnership with the ILO. The primary source was supplemented by telephone interviews with selected recipients.
The approach was made through an exploration of educational paths followed by the recipients, their valuation about the improvement of their employability and the linking of labour market´s actors that the Office of Employment conducts. The main results reveal that there is a large proportion of beneficiaries without an educational paths that qualified them for an occupation, negative perceptions about their employability and situations of labor inactivity. The need for better job counseling and labor market attachment, in order to improve the situation of the analyzed group, is highlighted in this paper.
Keywords: employability - educational paths -  Beneficiaries of Social Programs – Mar del Plata.
 

The cultural production of design. The case of self-managed designers in Buenos Aires city.

María Eugenia CORREA

 In the last years, in Argentina, and specifically in Buenos Aires City, diverse self-managed productions, linked to design of objects, have generated the participation of many young people in the productive structure. In this context, young self-managed designers are configured, combining economic and productive strategies with cultural and artistic productions, giving shape to objects that ‘charge’ a singular aesthetics.
This work proposes to describe and analyze the modality of insertion of these young designers into the economical and labor scene, impelled by a practice of self-management through which diverse designed objects -in terms of cultural goods- are produced.
It is interesting to research the development of the “self-managed design” enterprises   because of the impact in cultural field and in quotidian life, inside a visual culture where design operates on the objects, bringing them symbolic value to be incorporated to everyday life. Also it is interesting to comprehend the way this practice constructs life-styles and configures identities, applying to individualized consumer goods, according to design products. This article will present the main recent results of the research. 
Keywords: Self-managed design - Cultural production – Self-management – Identity configuration – Symbolic every-day construction

Spatial mobility, Occupation and Employment
in the Inferior Valley of the River Chubut

M. Marcela CROVETTO

From a perspective that proposes a number of criticisms of the dichotomous typology of demographic classification of living space, rural and urban, has inquired about the forms that everyday spatial mobility in relation to employment in the Valle Inferior del Río Chubut -Patagonia-Argentina, following a special situation of everyday spatial mobility as that concerning the production of cherries in the Valley.
Were used statistics, historical and documentary in coordination with the construction of primary data through surveys run by different techniques. Applied primarily a household survey (200 cases) suburbs of the towns involved in the Valle Inferior del Río Chubut.
The center of the research exercise was in contrasting the results of a field survey according to both the traditional classification of the area of residence (rural or urban) and an alternative proposal for research. So we evaluated the hidden nuances within the homogenizing ideas of rural and urban, synthesized by the number of inhabitants observed, -in Argentina to 2000 or more is considered an urban space, less a rural- especially, that many paths daily classically considered urban social actors were very close to those of the actors in rural areas.
Keywords: spatial mobility, employment, rural areas, urban space.

Young telephone agents of call centers offshore in Buenos Aires

 Andrea del Bono y María Noel Bulloni

 The article explores on some subjects of a research on the labor experiences shared by two groups of young telephone agents who offer telephone attention services from platforms of call centers offshore located in Buenos Aires (Argentina) to Spanish and North American clients. With the intention to catch the heterogeneity which characterized these workers experiences, the study on purpose questions the different logic of actions that contribute to their conformation, trying to explain the relationship between these logics of actions and the individual and collective behavior of the workers in relation to their work. 
Firstly, the article states that the change of status that starting to work in a call center represents is deeply tied to the diverse labor trajectories of the telephone agents, with their professional perspective and their social and cultural capital. Although the experiences of the telephone agents are heterogeneous they are threaded by variables of little recognition and low identification to their work.  This situation weakens the construction of solidarity and collective strategies of action and, at the same time, it encourages the telephone agents to identify themselves with other scopes of life, distant to their work, which allow them to sustain a more positive image of themselves. Nevertheless, the paper arguments that this kind of job has an unquestionably important place in the life of this young people. This importance is related to the hiring terms that the call center provides: a law binding permanent contract, which allows them to develop other personal projects. The article also examines the instrumental rationality that prevails in the form in which young people are related to their work, even though when they keep relating their wok to their freedom and the perspectives of the different aspects of their private life. In brief, the results exposed in the article reflect a kaleidoscopic and quite heterogeneous image of the labor experiences of the call centers workers, which argues and makes complex the most spread characterizations.

The trade union’s complex action plot: ATE and UPCN’s cases.

Nicolás Diana Menéndez

This paper proposes a comparative analysis of the internal dynamics that constitutes trade union’s action in the two national organizations from public sector workers: ATE and UPCN. The principal axes we want to discuss are, in the first place, the horizontal and vertical relationships established in each trade union. Secondly, the different kind of bounds generated between each organization and its militants. In addition, in the third place, we will approach the struggle strategies, to observe finally the way in which the dynamics of their own action and the dispute between trade unions interact and are superposed. 
We use a qualitative methodological approach, making in depth interviews to leaders and union delegates, as well as to workers and public administrators.

Processes of flexibility and outsourcing. An empiric study in the refinery La Plata Repsol-YPF

 Leticia Muñiz Terra

This article attempts to offer some elements to understand the processes of flexibility and outsourcing developed in our country. In this way, the principal questions that guide the research are: Which are the particularities of the flexibility process implemented in Argentina together with the new model of accumulation in the 90s?, What characteristics acquired the processes of outsourcing of the big national public companies that were privatized?, and Which were the consequences for their workers?
To answer to these questions we developed an empiric study in the refinery La Plata from the ex-public petroleum company Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales. The principal objective is to study the policy of outsourcing developed in the company after their privatization and the consequences that this strategy had along the years on the small enterprises conformed by its workers.

Recovery factories as expression of the acquired practice in the field of work.

A case study in the Gran Buenos Aires

Verónica García Allegrone

Part of the surveys of recovery of factories had interpreted this process as modalities of new responses of the unemployed workers front the unemployment, as a result of the “crisis” that had place in Argentina in the last years. Several surveys had registered the radical and rupture shape that this process had taken, and consider them an alternative to the capitalism, an alternative at the unemployment. If well understand the significance of the structural transformations in the analysis, we consider important to complete this surveys broaching the mode that operate life’s experiences that the workers acquiring on the work field, in the practices and social representations that evolve with the recovery.

In 2003 we started to fallow the experiences of the workers in an autopart factory in Gran Buenos Aires that was recovery in 2002. We based our research in a case study.  In the first part of the article, we present the construction of the claim for work and the arguments that the workers have been made about the factory crisis. We wonder how they arrive to appreciate the claim as “rightful”. In the second part we reflect about workers life experiences, that they used as tools to recovery the factory. 

Convertibility plan and syndicalists during president Menem’s term

 Hernán Fair

 A drastic process of state reform and economic changes that dramatically modified economic and social countries’ structure took place between 1989 and 1999 during president Menem’s term. These basic amendments obeyed neoliberal ideology and were opposite to economic policies always held by peronism. In spite of that, argentinian president would gain and keep for a long time the support of a great and heterogeneous social coalition that includes businessmen, popular representatives and syndicalists. In fact, huge economic change did not find a consistent and unified oposition within these groups. How this support can be explained? Has the Convertibility plan any influence over that attitude? Focusing on term 1991-1995, this article tries to investigate the relationship between the Convertibility plan and his “selective incentives” on the social legitimacy gained by menemism.

Labor and relational trajectories of professionals of multinational companies
in Cali, Colombia.

Johnny Javier  Orejuela

It is known that, the labor flexibility affects negatively, fundamentally to the less qualified populations, the young workers but or but the old ones and with less networks of sociability; what is interesting at the moment is that these processes of precariousness of the work begin to also affect of different way and in less proportion, but perhaps single so far, to the professional groups. By the previous thing, the objective of this investigation was to characterize the labor and relational trajectories of EMN professionals. The present study of case, I constitute myself with 11 interviews in depth to professionals of the multinational sector. The findings allow to understand the existing relation between the labor and relational trajectory, its mutual affectations and their importance to understand present the dynamic ones of the labor market.

A sociological inquiry upon the literary field.
The rules of art by Pierre Bourdieu.

Ana Teresa Martínez

In this paper, we dwell upon Pierre Bourdieu’s contribution on sociology of literature. We develop the main literary field notion features, exploring the ideas of relative autonomy, nomos and illusio. We also remember several sides about the concept of field elaboration process, as Pierre Bourdieu thought it. Finally, we examine the epistemological questions he tries to resolve as a social topology or analysis situs.

Key words.

Literary field/Pierre Bourdieu/nomos/illusio/social topology

The blank page block. Sociology as literary gender.

Carlos Virgilio Zurita

A sociologist`s work becomes apparent, and takes form, through writing. This is something that everybody in the academic world knows and suffers. In order to demonstrate that one exists, you must write. Students, both under-and postgraduate, must give evidence of their institutional, and even personal, life and activity, in the form of papers, articles, theses, and  even books.

These notes explore the frontiers and terrain where sociology and literature meet in the realm of practices. They critically examine the supposed reasons why the problems of writing rarely figures in social science curricula in Argentina (or even Latin America as a whole), and go on to highlight some of the potentially negative implications this situation has academics` professional and personal development.

The institutional process of the academic sociology in Argentina (1955-1966)

  Alberto Noé  

In this article the historical and social conditions of creation and development of academic sociology are analyzed in the University of Buenos Aires, in the period 1955-1966. The founders actors is also characterized: institutional actors, socio-political actors and individual actors, especially through Gino Germani's intellectual and academic trajectory, and the internal and external conflicts until the crisis of 1966, taken place by the coup by the general Juan Carlos Onganía.

   
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Roots of socio-economic thought. The labour division 
on Adam Smith, Karl Marx and Émile Durkheim.

Liliana Bergesio

In these days, revisiting the called “classic” authors’ work becomes relevant because the central topics focused by these masters models´ pioneers have been reframed and inform the current debates. When this kind of themes appear, we meet again the theoretical questions faced by these authors and the knowledge about their concepts increases our own understanding about contemporary questions. 

This article draws on Adam Smith, Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim´s ideas about labour division to reconsider this basic issue in human sociability. As this kind of analysis has not been a frequent topic in Social Sciences, I invite the reader to a debate in order to highlight its potential.

Key words: labour division – Adam Smith – Karl Marx – Émile Durkheim

   
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  To study outlier fields. 
An essay about the conditions for a profitably use of Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of field.

Ana Teresa Martínez

In this work we develop our theoretical and epistemological grounds to read and make use of the Pierre Bourdieu’s theory. Then, we review the difficulties exposed by several Argentineans authors to use his concept of field to study the local intellectual world. We propose them an exercise where we use this theory to study a outlier field: a cultural association in Santiago del Estero 1920-30. We pay attention specially on weakness and dependent conditions of this social space.

Key words: intellectual field, Bourdieu, Santiago del Estero  

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Interpretation of the discovery of “Chaco-santiageña” civilization by the Wagner Brothers: 
temporality in the theory and existence of the subjects (archeologists).

Beatriz Ocampo

This work interprets the archeological discovery of the “Chaco-santiagueña” civilization by the Wagner Brothers, in the province of Santiago del Estero, at  the beginning of the XX th. century from the theoretical perspectives and from the own history of the authors.

Travellers, naturalists, explorers, botanists, archeologists, Emile and Duncan Wagner belonged to the French aristocracy; they developed an intense scientific life, as well in Argentine as in Europe, particularly in France.

The “diffusionist”” theory served these authors as an interpretation framework of the temporality of the “Chaco-santiagueña” civilization. According to the latter and to the analysis of the symbolical representations printed on pottery objects and by means of the use of the comparative method, they affirmed the paralelism between Trya and Hissarlic. From this interpretation the “Chaco-santiagueña” civilization emerges from a Great Basic, Universal and Timeless Civilization.

My interest lies in incorporating this discussion about the theorical interpretation of the Wagner Brthers to the use they realize themselves to speak about themselves as subjects, living in a world far from their native country, France, and from its culture.

Key Words: “Chaco-santiagueña” Civilization, Diffussionism, Universal, Basic and Timeless

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Education, School and Centenary.The case of Santiago del Estero.

María Mercedes Tenti

The centenary anniversary of May Revolution’s, turned into an opportunity to 'construct" a collective memory, that would contribute the consolidation of the national development model back then. However in every local territory, beyond the national strategy, each province celebrations had particularities, according its own characteristics, leading characters and regional cultural guidelines.

Beside those local particularities, in every case, the school played a preponderant role as a legitimization strategy. The purpose of this research paper, just a brief part of the PHD thesis, is to investigate Santiago del Estero´s own characteristics (including its Capital and other cities) during the centenary anniversary, analyzing school role in different scenarios.  

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Theoretical meditate around the study of the labor conflict. 
The processes of social construction of resistance.

Juan Montes Cató

In the last years it seemed that the labor conflict has restored the place that historically it had within the analyses on the work relations. Some advances in the study of the variation of the confliction testify this phenomenon. Nevertheless, still the investigations are little that approach the dynamics of the labor conflict in the spaces and concrete places of work. This second field supposes to solve a series of problems: what dimensions can be distinguished at the time of studying the actions of workers , it reaches with characterizing the moment of expression opened of the action to give account of the phenomenon, what paper plays the symbolic dimension in the fights between the capital and work? Starting of these questions, the article crosses the main traditions and proposes tracks for an analysis of the labor conflict like social configuration submissive processes of daily construction

Key words: labor conflict, resistance, relations of the work, theory  

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The exaltation of the worker's weakness as historical singularity of neoliberal capitalism. 
The case of chain Coto supermarkets

Paula Abal Medina

In this article the notion of power dispositive is applied to the study of relations between capital and work in the Coto supermarket company. Two central points are presented: firstly a multiplicity of power practices that are part of the different elements of the company dispositive are described and analysed. Secondly the question of the subjectivation of the capital and of the general and singular main line, that defines the studied relations. 

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 Crisis of the work and workers' management. Collective dynamics of management 
in recovered productive units in Argentina (1996-2006)

María Mercedes Patrouilleau

This paper sets out to analyze the collective dinamicas of management in productive units that have been taken by their workers in last decade in Argentina. The metodological boarding identifies three cases of recovered companies by a qualitative aproch, using semi-structured interviews and observations in spaces of factory and administration. The work tries to identificate logics and the underlying difficulties to these collective managements and his relations with structural conditions (resources of inversin and technologist), collective organization and subjective conditions.

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A cycle of struggles stared in by the Sanitary Work Union of the Nation 
(Argentina, 1974 – 198 4)

Ana Nuñez

This article rescues and describes a cycle of struggles stared in by the Sanitary Work Union of the Nation (Argentina, September 1974 - August 1984), that has been an unobservable for the dominant bibliography. The conceptual conflict periods, its unfolding and resolution by the water and plumbing service municipalization in an intermediate city (process that has also been avoided by literature, in front of the different forms from privatization), allows to enter itself in the genesis of a political institution.

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  Relations and specific practices of a group of cardboard pickers in Buenos Aires

Débora Gorbán 

In the last years Argentina has experienced the growth in the number of people who live of informal recollection of waste. Known as cirujas first and cardboard pickers (cartoneros) later, the peculiarity of this activity resides in their conditions of visibility and exhibition that characterised the work space in which it is developed. In this sense, we consider not only the street as a place where this labour activity is carried out, but also other spaces in which this labour practice is developed. In this paper we analyse the relations and specific practices of a group of cardboard pickers that arrive every day from their districts in Buenos Aires province, to Capital Federal, where they make the recollection.  Our objective is to identify the of significant social spaces constructed by them, taking into consideration their labour activity. To begin with this analysis we considered space in its “material” connotation, focusing in the spaces that emerged as central in our investigation. In this work we understand social space as a set of meaning and communication relations, that is way we studied the configurations that this relations take in each empirical space; the relations and practices that take place in them and how these ones could converged into specific social spaces. We follow a qualitative methodological perspective, using as research tools in depth and structured interviews with cardboard pickers of Jose Leon Suárez, and participant observation in its neighbourhoods.

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   Vitivinicola development in Mendoza, Argentine. Notes on its origin

Patricia A. Collado

The present study approaches the origins of Mendoza’s economic development, by means of Schumpeter’s theory about the dynamical behavior of elites, according to Hugo Nochteff’s interpretation (for Argentina and Latin America).

In this respect, we characterize the particular way in which Mendoza’s local bourgeoisie  leads a process of adoption of policies tending to establish an agroindustrial model, seeking for the innovative parameters that, from our point of view, contribute to understand this regional development as expressly induced by the economic and political elite. We trace the principal policies that cooperated with this regional development, because they were orientated to improve access and availability to land, credit and investments in the sector, and also infrastructure, incorporation of labor force and the development of science and technology, all in order to serve of the new model.

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 The active policies of use for the Latin American group in Spain

Francisco Sacristán Romero

The active policies of use for the Latin American group try to contribute to the increase of the incorporation possibilities and labor maintenance of these workers so related to the Spanish culture, combining, at the same time, flexibility and security in the use.  In addition, in macroeconomic terms, the selective performance on the supply and the demand, with measures such as the promotion of the deprived initiative, the aid to mobility to sectors with sufficient demand or the direct creation of use, allow to reduce to the imbalances or misalignments in the work market.

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Local Development and Types of Productions: opportunities for the small productions

Raúl Paz, Ramiro Rodríguez y Viviana González

Considering that the local rural development can has a productive activity as base of its maintenance, it’s strange not to ask about which are the intrinsic characteristics that those types of productions should have for contribute to local development. This aspect acquires major relevance for its analysis specially when It’s found associated to rural poverty as much as small peasant production. In this context, results useful to reveal the inforce cultural contents in everyday productive life; in one way or another, in their significative construction, are engaged, an important part of the local producers. The central argument that will be present through all this article is the existence of invisible components in the everyday working of the types of productions, carried out by the small producer, that have influence in a silent way on the possibility of success – or failure- of a local development project. The analysis will take place in the Rio Dulce irrigation area of Santiago del Estero province – Argentina. In this region, in 1987, a Non-Governmental Organization began a Development of Small Goatish Producers project and it’s until today the place where a group of initiatives from different organizations and institutions are still adding.
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Labour scene of Latin America in the frame of neoliberalism

Irma Acosta Reveles

In this article I have wanted to delineate the central trends from labour scene of Latin America in the frame of neoliberalism, as well as the domineering perceptions concerning these processes. I have centered in the aspects of major meaning for wage-labor in their insertion to the economic cycle from the sale of the labourforce. The aim is to show that the different dimensions that include the relations between capital and work they have been change thoroughly, and not  also in a level of  the labour market; nevertheless that is this one the space that has deserved main attention of analysts and politicians. The proposition is that the origin of changes that they have been express in circulation sphere it will be find in adjustment substantive from mechanism extraction of the surplus value (inside productive process), and the results is the reformulation of traditional standards from the distribution of social wealth between the productive factors.  

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Argument and narration in the scientific report

Alberto Tasso
Doctor UBA, área Historia. Investigador del CONICET.
Profesor de la Universidad Nacional de Santiago del Estero.
 tasso@arnet.com.ar

Is there truly a frontier among the text 'scientific' and the one that doesn't seek to be it? The article tries to shorten the imaginary breach among the scientific prose to the literary one. Beyond their specific differences, it shows their common areas, not only given by the demand of composition of a text, but in the argumentational search and until in the moment to begin to write. 

Through authors of methodology manuals, and of the dispersed one mandatory enunciated by different writers, some of the significant moments are identified in the task of the report of an investigation. After analyzing some cases of narrative in the social sciences, some cooperation forms and mutual use are pointed out among those who practice the writing. 

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Microenterprises in the urban economy of Santiago del Estero

Ramón Antonio Díaz
Universidad Nacional de Santiago del Estero, Argentina
rad@unse.edu.ar

In this paper, the contribution of  microenterprises to the urban economy of Santiago del Estero, is analyzed under a comparative and descriptive point of view.

In the beginning, on the basis of Censo Nacional Económico 1994 data, the position of this segment of entrerprises is compared with other provinces of NOA region, and with the national average, taking into account variables as employment, income and wages. In addition, the concept of productivity is also considered.

The study is extended along the decade with EPH data, in order to meassure the effects of 1994-95 crisis and subsequent growing cycle in  urban economy, on microentreprises performance in terms of salaries evolution and dynamic of  employment.

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Critical comments for the FAO’s land use planning model in the Mexican context

Medina Sanson, L., Anaya Garduño, M., 
Ortiz Solorio C., Volke Haller, V. y Pérez Farrera, M.
Universidad Autónoma de Chiapas, IRENAT, México
medina@colpos.mx,anayam@colpos.mx

The land use planning is a model postulated by the FAO, focused to the development of the rural population and to guarantee the long term availability of natural resources. Nevertheless, many land use planning methods have been ineffective because they do not consider the objectives of the users nor those of the governments. In Mexico, the index of population growth and environmental deterioration makes indispensable to develop procedures for land use planning that agreed with the specific limitations, potentials and resources. In this sense, it is important to review the reach of FAO’s  planning model, in order to glimpse favorable strategies and actions in agreed with the social and academic Mexican reality . Considering these issues, it was critically revised the FAO’s model and it was recognized as critical to equilibrate: objectives and perspective of communities, governments and of the technicians; necessities of research, human resources and available materials; attention to biological necessities and cultural necessities; production of goods and protection of resources. 

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Areas of frontiers Chaco-Salteña

Fernando Ariel Bonfanti
 Alejandra Torre Geraldi.
Facultad de Humanidades
Universidad Nacional del Nordeste, Argentina
fernandobonfanti@yahoo.com.ar

The present investigation work has as objective to identify the problems that contain the frontier spaces, specifically in the frontier Chaco-salteña, with the purpose of knowing its cultural and socio-economic characteristics. 

We begin considering that a distinctive feature of the areas of frontiers is to imagine them as complex spaces where interact constantly towns with marked cultural, economic and social differences that transfer him own activities. 

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The labor trajectories and strategies of families in contexts of poverty 
in the Great San Juan (Argentina) through a study of cases

María Luisa Graffigna
CONICET-Universidad Nacional de San Juan (IISE-FacSo)
mllg@arnet.com.ar

The structural transformations that took place in the last decades marked notably the trajectories of numerous families. In particular the changes in the labor market –more flexibility, more precariousness, unemployment- make that the access to protected and relatively steady employments –a characteristic feature of the Welfare State- is a goal difficult to reach. The situation is still more difficult for the families in positions of economic and social fragility, whose members in general possess scarce qualification and habitually they operate in the informal labor market.

In this frame, the present article seeks to characterize the labor trajectories and strategies of families in contexts of poverty in the Great San Juan through a study of cases.

The study was developed by means of a qualitative strategy in a context of discovery that allows to give account of the perspective of the actor. The cases belong to homes of the Great San Juan whose election was guided for the search of diversity in labor category, gender, age; and with the criterion that they in any moment of their labor trajectory present situations of fragility or vulnerability to the poverty.

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Configuration of subjectivity in employed and unemployed workers in Biobío, Chile

Areli Escobar S.
Universidad de Concepción, Chile
hualpenterra@hotmail.com

The transformations in the organization of work in contemporany capitalism have also provoked changes in the configuration of the subjectivity of the employed and unemployed workers in the services sector in the Biobío region in Chile. The co-opted involvement in the organization, the postfordist estrangement, usurpation of creative and imaginative abilities, the imposition of a social imaginary of work, and the individualization processes are some examples that highlight the metamorphoses of subjectivity in the current world of work.

Key words: work, unemployment, subjectivity, social imaginary, identity.

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A sociological workshop in action: Actes of the Recherche in Social Sciences

Loïc J.D. Wacquant
University of California, Berkeley-El College de France
Traducción: Javier Auyero
Sociology Department at Stony Brook, SUNY
javier.auyero@stonybrook.edu

In the article is examined the significance of Actes of the Recherche  in Social Sciences (ARSS), one of the publications of more important social sciences of the world and that it was founded more than thirty years ago by Pierre Bourdieu. The purpose of ARSS was to promote the internationalization of the social studies in France, overcoming national divisions. Although it was assumed like a review that privileged the scientific thing above the intellectual thing, their pages have been open to the conceptual and methodological innovation. 

The existence of four main thematic nuclei is pointed out in the review: i) the economy of the cultural goods, ii) the social classification and the production of collective social, iii) the dominance strategies, distinction, and reproduction, and iv) the study of practical, powers, and intellectual predicaments.  

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