Abstract

LIBERATORI, Marina. The ambiguities of fear: ethnographic analysis about insecurities in a slum in Cordoba, Argentina. Etnográfica [online]. 2019, vol.23, n.1, pp.27-47. ISSN 0873-6561.  https://doi.org/10.4000/etnografica.6255.

For more than a decade a deep concern for the social problems of insecurity has been developing in Argentina. This category is often related to the fear of crime in the political agenda and among some social sectors, mainly the middle and upper classes and some media. From these perspectives, those who live in slums, and mainly young men, tend to be judged as dangerous people. Through intensive fieldwork in 2009-2015, I have been able to observe how in the La Tela slum, fear is diverse and is not sensed necessarily as related to insecurity, but to the stigmas that are built about that place and its people, the material disadvantages of life in the slum, precarious work, among other issues. Additionally, fear is a relational, and sometimes ambiguous, construction that is at least double-sided, for there are those who fear and those who are feared. Some young people appropriate those stigmas of danger and evil that are assigned to them and assume the attitude of “bad guys” for purposes such as getting money, women, and respect. In other words, they use fear as a capital in a social context where other types of capital are scarce.

Keywords : fear; insecurity; poverty; slum.

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