“Social Violence and Power Relationships: Restrictions of the Structure, Production of Collective Characters, and Action Methods, in Empalme Graneros Neighbourhood”

Abstract

A sociological-anthropological discussion, which has yet to be finished, has been developing during the second half of the XX century in the historical-social arena, and has been influencing the core of the Latin American social sciences; the emphasis of this issue lies in the confrontation of the assumed opinions around the preeminence of the social structure over the individual motivations, and/or the ability to generate strategic actions to modify the objectifying regulations which try to limit them systematically. The aim of this article is to recover the conception of dialectical dynamics understood in terms of power relationships and class struggles to explain such connections; that is to say, the conflicting interests among the dominant groups which exert their power through the State institutions and their effects, and those who, sharing the same poverty, exploitation and alienation conditions offer resistance, analyzing it from the social violence situation, and its spreading over the various interacting areas in a Rosario neighbourhood, starting from the speeches, representations and practices which circulate among its inhabitants, many of whom visibly raise in strong poles of identity stigmatization.