“We did not sow in a barren field”. Politics and culture of Argentine workers (1955-1976)

Abstract

Interviews with working class militants present specific characteristics in terms of images, emphasis, and narrative structure, suggesting a specific structure of feeling. Analyzing a series of interviews with Argentine political militants from the 1960s and 1970s, this paper compares and contrasts the narratives of middle class and worker interviewees as regards to their responses as to how they became politicized. The image that emerges from these responses is that rather than presenting politicization as an “awakening”, most workers tend to explain it as a natural process emerging from their life experience. As such it seems to express a structure of feeling forged by working class families over several generations