Valor y política en la producción de un “Estado municipal moderno” en San Carlos de Bariloche. Un ensayo teórico-metodológico desde la Antropología

Abstract

This article presents a theoretical and methodological approach to the political process that took place during the implementation of one of the pillars of the Modernization Plan designed by the Juntos Somos Bariloche administration (2015-2023), aimed at transforming the internal management of the local municipality. On that basis, it inverts David Graeber's (2008, 2013, 2018) theory of value to bring it into empirical dialogue with some ethnographic materials produced during my doctoral research. Thus, the article takes "modernization" as an analytical object, assuming that, hand in hand with the rhetoric of "Development," it has come to function as a "social value" and, as such, has led to the political mobilization of various actors who, in the municipal arena, have struggled and continue to struggle to define what that status is and how it is achieved. The overall objective is to contribute to a situated understanding of the multiple ways in which the production (in the double sense of production and reproduction) of the municipality as a local political institution is carried out, based on a series of contested and tension-filled practices and meanings surrounding what "a modern state" (and its agents) is, can/should be.