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Accepted Paper:

Economic policies in the shadow: a political economy of sweatshops and clothing consumption  
Matías Dewey (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies)

Paper short abstract:

This paper attempts to show that La Salada market’s growth and expansion in the aftermath of the 2001 crisis is the outcome of an intended shadow policy aimed at giving response to the growing demand of clothes and jobs by low-income sectors.

Paper long abstract:

Similar to protest and social movements, market relations have also been a response to the 2001 Argentinean crisis. The emergence of La Salada market in the Great Buenos Aires during the nineties is a good example of growing exchanges oriented towards coping with the sequels of hyperinflation and neoliberal economic policies. As soon as the worst part of the crisis was over this market gained a new momentum. What started as a very local phenomenon gradually became an expanding mode of production based on a myriad of small sweatshops and on an increase in working-class clothing consumption. But this spectacular growth of La Salada, which reached distant regions and neighboring countries, would not have been possible without the illegal tutelage of different State agencies. This paper attempts to show that La Salada market's growth and expansion in the aftermath of the 2001 crisis is the outcome of an intended shadow policy aimed at giving response to the growing demand of clothes and jobs by low-income sectors. Using data collected during my recent six-month ethnographic fieldwork in Buenos Aires, I will show evidence about a core element in every political economy: a functioning tax system which, in this case, is informal and effectively imposed upon producers of counterfeit clothes and stallholders. By showing how this informal tax system works, which state agencies at different levels are implied, and how many resources flow around, I attempt to expose the main features of a particular way of promoting economic activities in turbulent times.

Panel P04
Argentina since the 2001 crisis: recovering the past, reclaiming the future
  Session 1