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Colby College

Publication Date

Spring 2018

Program Name

Argentina: Social Movements and Human Rights

Abstract

Since the 1970s, there has been a global increase in neoliberal policy and ideology, marked by privatization, deregulation, and the withdrawal of the state from social programs (Harvey 2005: 2-3). Neoliberalism has manifested itself in Argentina in various forms, notably in the rise of closed-gated neighborhoods. In Tigre, a northern suburb of Buenos Aires, real estate developers fill in wetlands and re-route river tributaries to construct closed-gated neighborhoods around artificial water bodies to create an idealized neighborhood that offers residents a life in contact with “nature”. Seeking to accumulate capital, real estate developers commodify and construct a specific form of nature in order acquire the maximum value for properties.

In this paper, I will demonstrate how the closed-gated neighborhoods in Tigre are a manifestation of neoliberalism with adverse environmental, social and cultural consequences and I will investigate in greater depth the contrasting ways in which real estate developers and marginalized groups consider "natural".

Disciplines

Economic Theory | Family, Life Course, and Society | Inequality and Stratification | Latin American Studies | Place and Environment | Sociology of Culture

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