Auyero 2012

Auyero, Javier. 2012. Patients of the state: the politics of waiting in Argentina. Durham: Duke University Press.\

• Introduction and Chapter 1
• waiting for government aid as "temporal processes in and through which political subordination is reproduced" (2)
• people are "kicked around", given the reunaround, forced to wait by local officials/bureaucrats (4)
• BOOK focuses on "the workings of political domination" among the urban poor, specifically through waiting (5)
•   state practices provide the poor with an education/crash course on the workings of state power
• they also shape clients perception of the state and their own status
• and clients learn the rules of the game
• making the dispossessed wait is negative, akin to repression, but has "positive" effects of creating citizens who are patient, subordinate, dominated; waiting creates this and recreates this (8-9)
• SEEMS LIKE CLIENTELISM ON A GRAND SCALE, NO?
• if the state really wanted active, full-fledged citizens, it wouldn't make them wait so much, waste their time, take time away from productive actions and/or political activity...so what this state actually wants is subordinates (22)
• the processes of waiting are part of the recreation of subordination, which looks like an exercise of power/agency but is actually subjugation through constraining use of time for the poor, demanding they not be contentious, and thereby preventing conflict from arising (34-35)

• Chapter 2: Urban Relegation
• since the neoliberal turn, (80s, but more in 1990s), shantytowns have been growing a great deal (36-38), inequality has been gorwing, and along with that spatial segregation of rich (behind gates) and poor has been on the rise (38-39)
• class mobility is decreasing, as is the belief that moving up is possible (39)
• Poor are dominated by: (41)
• "fists and kicks", state repression (which can be overt and covert), administered by government and army/police
• "tentacles", non-violent subjugation to "waiting", administered by local officials
• State repression
• overt: (48-56)
• protest and repression (decreasing repression after 2003)
• police violence still prevlaent
• incarceration increasing
• National Guard has occupied entire neighborhoods to "keep the peace"
• evictions of homeless/squatters from public spaces
• covert 56-58
• evictions by those contracted to do it by the state, usually fairly violent
• "tentacles"
• Kafkaesque play where government creaqtes threat/issue, then offers the solution for this isssue
• usually issue demands waiting, time spent in offices, paperwork
• there is no monoloithic state, but rather a large number of agents and agencies through which the poor have to maneuver, spending time (60-62)
• This domination, subjugation doesn't end all protests...protests will increase as social insecurities increase, both due to economics and interactions with the state (63)
• Chapter 3:
• local leaders tell the poor when and where to register, even when the state opens offices in their neighborhoods..."local leaders attempt to control the timing of the state's precarious and always limited welfare programs" (67)
• chapter argument: everything in their waiting teaches them a lesson: keep waiting, there's nothing you can do about the endless lines (73)
• three processes: veiling, confusing, rushing/delaying (73-74)
• all serve to snare poor people into uncertain and arbitrary waiting time
• there is a total absence of routine outside a RENAPER office (where one gets an ID card) (80)
• Chapter 4: The Welfare office
• everyone comes with someone (family usually)
• disorgainzed chaso in teh waiting room, lines are created and dissolved, people are given appointments on days when the office is closed (on accident)
• elections can speed up the cprocess, but afterward there is more "kicking the ball" down the street when it comes to actual payments (105-106)
• much of the fault of issues is placed on the computer..."i don't know why, but the computer says that", "it needs to be reprogrammed, so it will come later", the computers says this and that is the way it is....Auyero brings it to Marx's idea of the machine reprogramming the worker (115-118), but couldn't it also just as much be that there is little real reason for any of these things happening, and the computer can be a black, uncontrollable bo
• people come multiple times throughout the year for their benefits, as there seem to be many problem (118-123)
• but few complain once there, because "patients" understand that they are expected to wait, contestation may just bring about further delay, other "repressions" of sorts
• welfare benefits are gendered female:  women wait, get some random benefits 124-126)
• government pushes men toward employment opportunities (126)
• relying on welfare benefits leaves you on teh street, so in a way the state reinforces patriarchy by ensuring that stability can only be found if a women is with a man with a job (126-127)
• Chapter 5:  Chapter on environment
• for those waiting for a dangerous plant ot be moved, or for themselves to be moved away from the plant (by the government), politics is a profoundly dis-empowering experience, and everything takes a long time to work (if it does at all ) (143)
• court ruled in great favor of the residents, but the state has yet to comply in any way (148-152)
• Conclusion
• the state (of waiting and being dominated through waiting) is not a cultural phenomenon, but a political construct, somethign created by the state tiself (154-155)
• unpredictability and waiting have the effect of binding the poor to the state, reducing the poor's agency and disempowering them (156-7)