The militant world in contemporary argentine democracy. A study of militant trajectors in the province of Jujuy
Author: Adrán P Berardi Spairani, adrianberardi@gmail.com
Department: Instituto de Altos Estudios Sociales
University: Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Argentina
Supervisor: Sebastián Pereyra
Year of completion: 2018
Language of dissertation: Español
Keywords:
MILITANT CAREER
, POLITICAL COMMITMENT
, POLITICAL PARTICIPATION
, MILITANCY
Areas of Research:
Political Sociology
, Participation, Organizational Democracy and Self-Management
, Social Movements, Collective Action and Social Change
Abstract
This thesis is intended to inquire about political participation and commitment in present-time Argentina based on the study of the militant carrers. Aiming for this, it is centered on a group of militants from the province of Jujuy, the analysis of which is done in two different dimensions: an objective one, related to the areas and spaces of political participation, status accomplished, political cleavage and opportunities from which a certain trajectory comes out as a result; and a subjective one through which the militant’s own point of view is re-established regarding their own trajectory and political practice. These factors are studied throughout the various stages undergone by the militant along their lifetime, which allowed the building of a the militancy carrer and the existance of a militant world to be noticed.
Therefore, the study of political militancy is laid out, starting on the democratic transition from a newer perspective, connecting those structural conditions external to the individual and the militant’s personal features at the time of making decisions and carrying out their performances. This proposal requires the analysis of those components and features characterizing the ways of current militancy, resuming a longitudinal standpoint, regardless any particular organization, nor any specific protest cycle.
This thesis allows us to understand the different ways of commitment, the importance of participation areas and the objectives proposed by the practice of militancy, recapturing, at the same time, the militant’s personal perspective on his own practice, this itself being put under discussion with the structural and contextual factors, and those political cleavages in which it is framed, which breeds a new knowledge regarding political participation in Argentina.
This research shows how militancy is a social activity that mantains a constant dynamic and is determined by both political construction and the control and influence present in the decision-making areas. This aspects turn the militants into hibrid actors who indistinctely use the participation areas to meet their targets. This findings have allowed us to overcome the limitations from previous researches by refusing the eagerness of imposing equal characteristics when trying to explain political militancy.
On the other hand, this thesis takes up the importance of the province of Jujuy, taking in account that it is conditioned by a particular social context, in which a social mobilization process, related to various demands, is constantly taking place. This process has also gotten to be more visible with the appearance of new social, political and trade union organizations, even more with the simultaneous emergence of leaders who accomplish a national impact, despite Jujuy being a peripheral area.
To carry out this reaserch, tools of a qualitative sort were used, considering the technique of lifetime-narration, based on which the individual reconstructs their own militant life; this has allowed the linking between the perception of actisivm practice and the historical context that describes that portrayal.
