Biography
I am a political anthropologist who studies labour politics and social movements. My research focuses on collective politics in two quite different contexts: trade unions in Buenos Aires, Argentina and collective mobilisations of various kinds in El Alto, an indigenous and mixed-ethnicity city in the Bolivian Andes. I have worked on how ethics, politics and kinship come together in collective politics of these kinds, but also have interests in citizenship, social movements, and the anthropology of Latin America more generally. I am currently writing a book on labour politics, which takes a global and comparative perspective and explores labour agency in different sectors of the economy.
Research
The focus of my research is collective politics in two quite different contexts: Buenos Aires, Argentina, and El Alto, an indigenous and mixed-ethnicity city in the Bolivian Andes.
My most recent research has been an exploration of labour movement activism, with a focus on Argentina. I take an ethnographic approach to show how labour politics is embedded in daily life and personal experience. That has resulted in a book, called The Social Life of Politics: Ethics, Kinship and Union Activism in Argentina, published in June 2017 by Stanford University Press. The book is an exploration of the themes of subjectivity, kinship, class, morality and economy. I examine the lives of unionists in two public sector trade unions, focusing on the ways that they become activists, how that activism becomes a part of their personality and values, and how it is transmitted across generations. The second part of the book outlines the collective ways that the union delegations come into being, care for their members, enact their political projects, solve problems, and negotiate or mobilise for better working conditions. All this social, ethical and political action takes place within a particular contemporary political-economic context and a history of labour mobilisation, informed by Peronism and anarchosyndicalism.
The emphasis on labour politics has been important for my consideration of social movements and citizenship action more broadly. I have edited a book which explores the role of workers in moments of mass social upheaval in the Arab Spring of the Middle East and North Africa, in European anti-austerity movements, and in the ‘turn to the left’ in Latin America. The book is called Where are the Unions? Workers and Social Movements in Latin America, the Middle East, and Europe, published by Zed Books. This collection resulted from a conference I co-organised in 2014, called Bread, Freedom and Social Justice: Workers and Mass Mobilization in the Middle East, Latin America and Europe. Participants included anthropologists, sociologists, activists, literary scholars, journalists, historians, and the edited collection maintains this interdisciplinary focus.
Another workshop on Labour Politics in an Age of Precarity, in April 2017, explored labour politics from a different perspective. Contributors discussed case studies of how labour is organised in different contexts across Africa, Latin America, North America, Asia and Europe, and what effects such organization has on labour relations in conditions of economic precarity. The workshop examined precarity as a condition of life and one of the bases for a collective politics of labour, but without prejudging how that politics might look. This speaks to debates about the continuing relevance of labour-based mobilisation for economic justice, rights and well-being in a contemporary political context that often overlooks its very real impact across the globe.
My previous work was an ethnography of citizenship in El Alto. In the early 2000s, El Alto became one of the most important centres of political radicalism in Bolivia. In 2003-5, street protests concentrated in El Alto forced two of Bolivia’s presidents to resign, and in December 2005 Bolivians elected their first indigenous president, Evo Morales. I researched the processes and conflicts that lie behind this political power at the local level, considering in particular everyday practices and experiences of citizenship that structure the relationships between residents of El Alto and the Bolivian state. This resulted in a book: El Alto, Rebel City: Self and Citizenship in Andean Bolivia, published by Duke University Press, which combines anthropological methods and theories with political philosophy.
Research Interests
Latin America (specifically Argentina and Bolivia); social movements, especially labour movements; ethnography of the state, democracy and citizenship; gender; the city; and the anthropology of politics and development.
Publications
2023

2017


2013

2008

2022

Doi: http://doi.org/10.1177/14634996211030196
2021

Doi: http://doi.org/10.1111/1469-8676.12980

Doi: 10.1111/1469-8676.1.2980
2019

Doi: 10.1007/s10624-019-09544-7
2018

Doi: 10.1177/0308275X16683023

Doi: 10.1111/1467-9655.12809
2016

Doi: 10.1111/jlca.12172

2015

Doi: 10.1111/aman.12227

Doi: 10.1111/plar.12111
2014

Doi: 10.1111/1467-9655.12095
2013

Doi: 10.1177/0308275X12466678

Doi: 10.1177/0308275X12466684
2012

Doi: 10.1111/j.1548-1417.2012.01073.x

Doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9655.2012.01747.x

Doi: 10.1080/17448689.2012.738898
2010

Doi: 10.1111/j.1548-1492.2010.01077.x
2008

2006

Doi: 10.1111/j.0261-3050.2006.00157.x

Doi: 10.1111/j.0261-3050.2006.00159.x
2004

Doi: 10.1177/0308275X04045423

Doi: 10.1111/j.1470-9856.2004.00106.x
2018

2016

Doi: 10.4324/9781315738642
2014

2012 (No publication date)

2012

2010


2007

2005

Teaching and Supervisions
SAN1: The comparative perspective: Politics and Economic Life
SAN6: Power, economy and social transformation: Contemporary Capitalism
SAN8: Development, poverty and social justice
SAN11: Anthropology of digital, auditory and visual worlds: Case Studies