Autor/es
Descripción
ver mas
Colaborador
Rebón, Julián
Idioma
spa
Extent
374 p.
Derechos
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 2.0 Genérica (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Formato
application/pdf
Identificador
Cobertura
7593303
Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires (autonomus city)
7006287
Buenos Aires (inhabited place)
2002-2010
Abstract
This dissertation addresses the conditions that activate different modalities of social dissatisfaction that go beyond the institutional channels for processing and resolving conflicts. It concentrates on those factors causing outbreaks of hostility on the basis of an analysis of events of open protests on the part of passengers of the metropolitan railway system of Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area between October, 2002 and December, 2010.
The quality of train services during this period motivated strong discontent in passengers. This was expressed in numerous events of collective violence, which often involved causing physical damage to objects or people which the attackers identified with the companies responsible for the service. Some of these episodes were salient in terms of their intensity in terms of human and material costs and their media impact, such as the cases of mass violence that took place in the train stations of Haedo (November 1st, 2005 ), Constitución (May 15, 2007 and December 23, 2010) and Castelar (September 4th 2008) 2010).
The study of these events has led us to conceptualize them as collective outbursts. Although we use in part the analytical developments of Neil Smelser (1963), we differ with regard to the stress that they put on the psychological aspects of his theorization. In our perspective, the central issue is not the existence of hostile beliefs, of a magical character, which give rise to the collective behavior, but the emergence of hostile actions whose constituent processes it is necessary to understand. We deal with outbreaks of violence that erupt suddenly and violently after a detonating event. Hostility is transformed into anger and rage which finds expression by attacks on personifications of those responsible for the experienced situation.
Our main hypothesis is that the systemic configuration (García, 2006) of the urban train service produces a structural tension between the production and consumption functions. In response to recurrent shocks, this structural tension will rise to unusual levels, making the system unable to process it. In these circumstances, boundary conditions such as the existence of cultural and political frameworks favorable to direct action will lead to major disturbances, such as the outbreaks of passenger hostility. In turn, this kind of disturbance will have impacts on the social organization of the service.
In brief, the system under study finds itself permanently in an unstable equilibrium, subject to perturbations at different levels and scales. Sometimes, these disruptions may trigger reorganizations of various elements of the system, but without causing - at least during the period of this study – a significant structural change.
The quality of train services during this period motivated strong discontent in passengers. This was expressed in numerous events of collective violence, which often involved causing physical damage to objects or people which the attackers identified with the companies responsible for the service. Some of these episodes were salient in terms of their intensity in terms of human and material costs and their media impact, such as the cases of mass violence that took place in the train stations of Haedo (November 1st, 2005 ), Constitución (May 15, 2007 and December 23, 2010) and Castelar (September 4th 2008) 2010).
The study of these events has led us to conceptualize them as collective outbursts. Although we use in part the analytical developments of Neil Smelser (1963), we differ with regard to the stress that they put on the psychological aspects of his theorization. In our perspective, the central issue is not the existence of hostile beliefs, of a magical character, which give rise to the collective behavior, but the emergence of hostile actions whose constituent processes it is necessary to understand. We deal with outbreaks of violence that erupt suddenly and violently after a detonating event. Hostility is transformed into anger and rage which finds expression by attacks on personifications of those responsible for the experienced situation.
Our main hypothesis is that the systemic configuration (García, 2006) of the urban train service produces a structural tension between the production and consumption functions. In response to recurrent shocks, this structural tension will rise to unusual levels, making the system unable to process it. In these circumstances, boundary conditions such as the existence of cultural and political frameworks favorable to direct action will lead to major disturbances, such as the outbreaks of passenger hostility. In turn, this kind of disturbance will have impacts on the social organization of the service.
In brief, the system under study finds itself permanently in an unstable equilibrium, subject to perturbations at different levels and scales. Sometimes, these disruptions may trigger reorganizations of various elements of the system, but without causing - at least during the period of this study – a significant structural change.
Título obtenido
Doctora en Ciencias Sociales
Institución otorgante
Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Sociales