Sociospatial Transformation in Argentina's Recovered Businesses Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation Authors Baldridge, John Richard Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 01/10/2021 14:11:28 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/204112 1 SOCIOSPATIAL TRANSFORMATION IN ARGENTINA’S RECOVERED BUSINESSES by John Richard Baldridge ___________________________________ A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the SCHOOL OF GEOGRAPHY AND DEVELOPMENT In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY WITH A MAJOR IN GEOGRAPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2010 2 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Dissertation Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by John Baldridge entitled Sociospatial Transformation in Argentina’s Recovered Businesses and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy ____________________________________________________________Date: 4/22/10 Marvin Waterstone ____________________________________________________________Date: 4/22/10 Sallie Marston ___________________________________________________________Date: 4/22/10 Elizabeth Oglesby ___________________________________________________________Date: 4/22/10 Paul Robbins Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate's submission of the final copies of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement. ____________________________________________________________Date: 4/22/10 Dissertation Director: Marvin Waterstone 3 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in his or her judgment the proposed use of the material is in the interests of scholarship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author. SIGNED: John Richard Baldridge 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I want to thank my partner, Liz, for all her support and tolerance during a long and arduous process, which involved hours of remote video chat while I was in the field (and, for that matter, to acknowledge Skype for making that possible). My parents, who encouraged me from birth to be an active learner, deserve recognition as catalysts in my recurring decisions to seek academic credentials. I also wish to acknowledge the support and encouragement of many good friends, with a special appreciation for that of Paul Burkhardt, Zoe Hammer-Tomizuka, and Kathy Morris. They, in particular, created a porch in my soul that will always be with me. Kim Stanley Robinson, the science fiction author, deserves a mention here, as his phenomenal set of novels about the colonization of Mars served as an introduction to the Mondragón cooperatives, which eventually led me to Argentina and the dissertation you are reading right now. Robinson’s most recent novels cast the National Science Foundation as a kind of heroic entity, and I most certainly want to acknowledge the NSF and its generous contribution to my research in the form of the Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant. I also want to thank Simon Batterbury, for introducing me to the work of Elinor Ostrom. But more than anything, those I wish to acknowledge most are the people in Argentina who, despite the pressures and obligations of their ongoing struggles to recover and maintain their jobs, took the time to speak with me, answer questions, and make introductions to others. Without their help, this dissertation would be only a pale echo of what it has become. Finally, I want to thank my committee members—Marv Waterstone, Sallie Marston, Paul Robbins, and Elizabeth Oglesby—for their patience and feedback. Now that the work is done, however, it is time to move on to ever greener pastures. 5 DEDICATION For all those who struggle to become “workers of another class.” 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................................................9 LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................10 ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................11 INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................12 Methods and Approaches ..........................................................................................15 A Brief Reader’s Guide ............................................................................................27 CHAPTER ONE: CAPITAL, CONTRADICTION—CRISIS! A Brief History of Argentine Political Economy ......................................................34 December 19, 2001 ...................................................................................................34 Crisis as Normality: Patterns of Political Economic Disaster .................................37 Accumulation and Crisis ..........................................................................................39 Early Primitive Accumulation in Argentina .............................................................42 Capitalization of Agriculture and Overproduction of Beef ......................................44 Rise of the Export Economy and the “Spatial Fix” ..................................................45 The Railroad and Late Nineteenth Century “Technological Fixes” .........................48 Overproduction in the Early 20 th Century ................................................................50 Perón’s First Reign: The “Second Cut” in the Mid-20 th Century.............................53 The Fall and Rise of Peronism .................................................................................55 Perón’s Final Rise and Fall ......................................................................................58 Dictatorship and Desaparecidos ...............................................................................63 From the “Process” to the “Model” ..........................................................................74 The Neo-liberal Era: Menemism and El Modelo .....................................................78 December 19, 2001: the Cacerolazo .......................................................................89 CHAPTER TWO: OCCUPY, RESIST, PRODUCE Recovered Business and Their Movements ..............................................................96 Forging a Future: The Takeover of IMPA ..............................................................97 The Organized Movements: MNER and MNFR ....................................................101 Anatomy of a Typical Recovery, Step One: Occupation ........................................120 Anatomy of a Typical Recovery, Step Two: Resistance .........................................125 Anatomy of a Typical Recovery, Step Three: Production ......................................133 The Big Picture .........................................................................................................142 CHAPTER THREE: IS A SPECTRE HAUNTING BUENOS AIRES? Business Recoveries and the Cooperative Manifesto ...............................................148 Workplace Takeovers and the Role of Ideology ......................................................155 Marx and Cooperativism ..........................................................................................159 Capital vs. Cooperative: Are They Really Opponents? ..........................................168 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS—Continued Is the Spectre a Friendly Ghost? ...............................................................................176 Radical Creative Destruction ....................................................................................185 CHAPTER FOUR: GOVERNING THE INDUSTRIAL COMMONS Toward a New Economic Imaginary of Common Property ...................................197 Theorizing the Commons .........................................................................................198 Why an Industrial Commons? ..................................................................................209 Institutional Analysis and Lived Spaces on the Industrial Commons ......................219 Shifts in Emphasis: Institutional Analysis on the Industrial Commons ..................224 CHAPTER FIVE: RULES AND REORGANIZATION Institutional Practice on Argentina’s Industrial Commons ....................................236 Policy Level Institutions ...........................................................................................238