Conditional cash transfer programs and the representations of poverty in Bolivia and Peru

Bolivia and Peru adopted the same instruments of social policy —conditional cash transfer programs— to solve the same public problems under different political regimes. By means of the qualitative methodology of discourse analysis, this paper studies the representations of poverty and State made by key actors of those social programs. Underlying more differences than similarities, one demonstrates that the same social policy is linked to opposite social representations of poverty and the State role in every country. The main explanation for this is, far from being imposed by international organizations, those programs are adopted and adapted by each political regime.

Waged domestic work in Argentina: the regulation of care provision

This paper addresses the condition of domestic work in Argentina, in a perspective that draws from the literature on care work. In this approach, domestic work can be interpreted as one of the mercantile forms in which care work is socially organized, due to the persistence of the traditional sexual division of labor and the weakness of public policies. From these considerations, I develop a quantitative study on the levels of informality, precarity, and wage inequality that characterize domestic work in that country. Thereafter, I discuss the main measures adopted by the Argentine government since 2003, with the goal of reducing legal discrimination of domestic workers and promoting their formalization. On this basis, the paper highlights the advances in the recognition of domestic workers’ labor rights, while emphasizing how social and cultural restraints still permeate labor relations in this sector.

Narrative Deliberation? On Storytelling as a Necessary Component of Public Deliberation

This paper deals with the place of narrative, that is, storytelling, in public deliberation. A distinction is made between weak and strong conceptions of narrative. According to the weak one, storytelling is but one rhetorical device among others with which social actors produce and convey meaning. In contrast, the strong conception holds that narrative is necessary to communicate, and argue, about topics such as the human experience of time, collective identities and the moral and ethical validity of values. The upshot of this idea is that storytelling should be a necessary component of any ideal of public deliberation. Contrary to recent work by deliberative theorists, who tend to adopt the weak conception of narrative, the author argues for embracing the strong one. The main contention of this article is that stories not only have a legitimate place in deliberation, but are even necessary to formulate certain arguments in the fi rst place; for instance, arguments drawing on historical experience. This claim, namely that narrative is constitutive of certain arguments, in the sense that, without it, said reasons cannot be articulated, is illustrated by deliberative theory’s own narrative underpinnings. Finally, certain possible objections against the strong conception of narrative are dispelled.