Grimson bolivianos en Buenos aires

mas foto de fiestas, esta en el barrio



Grimson analizes the identity construction among Bolivian migrants to Buenos Aires as constituted within intra and intercultural frames of communication. This migratory process is not only seen as problematic by the Argentinean society, both by the state and by a public sphere, but is also falsely connect migration with unemployment. Communication for Grimson is not just the instance of the interpellation of migrants as others made by dominant discourses nor is an analysis of the interpretations of the immigrants readings of the dominant cultures but rather works over multiple dimensions of the communicative process. To do this he reconstructs the self construction of identities among the Bolivian immigrants, living in the charrua neighborhood (inhabited by a majority of immigrant and second generation of Bolivians) in the symbolic interaction that put into play multiple systems of meaning both in the everyday production of meaning that include the interpretation and appropriation of technological mean of communication (the radio). In this sense he carefully follows the interpretations of the actors of the social relations in which identity is recreated. He therefore analyzes the intercultural encounters in the spaces of everyday life: from the public transportation to the factory and interaction with the police. Even though he does not engage in a racial critique, he recognizes the force of the stigma carried in the body. He claims that “the inequality proclaimed by vast sector of the receiving society associate a symbolic difference with a sociobiological one.” (50 my translation). Its extreme construction associates a body fisionomy to poverty, lack of “education”, criminality and amorality. The body is thus a marker of difference read by the “porteños” who react in different ways as they recognize them as others, mostly in either direct verbalizations of stereotypes (among working class and “provincial” porteños) or by bodily signs of demarcations of difference, such as looking down, or showing fear of a projected criminality, among the “educated” middle class. In this sense for Grimson communication is also about proxemics and body communication. To this situations Grimson show how people react by either letting the stigma be manifested, by pushing the stigma to a limit through reinforcing it with exaggeration and by inverting the stigma and “giving it back” to the producer. This is what he call counterstigmatization strategies He uses the notion of hibridity to give account of the way identity is recreated in Buenos Aires in the intersections of nationality, religiosity, indigeneity, profession, and generational lines that converge in it. In his book he unpacks four dimensions of the communicative process: a) the every day situations of intercultural communication in the city especially in their interactions with different social groups defined by them as: educated and provincials porteños, Koreans, Paraguayan, Peruvian and chilenian; b) the analysis of the festivities in the charrua neighborhood as a site of community building and of negotiation of tensions with the “receiving” society ; c) the appropriation of technological media for a self construction of identity and a self generated space for bolivianness; and d) the use of the television as educational political and position taking tool in diverse reception practices. A great quote by one of the “informants” : mira la sociedad argentina quiere aparentar ser mas mala de lo que es, quiere aparentar ser mas linda de los que es, quiere aparentar ser mas inteligente de lo que es. Pero si vos tratás con ellos te das cuenta que no son tan malos como parecen, no son tan lindos como parecen ni son tan inteligentes como parecen.” (49) He finally points to the fact that even though that form hegemonic position there is a tendency to attribute a social homogeneity the field of the popular is trasversed by forms of fragmentation of the practice that restricts a unified mobilization and the articulation of common interest.