Grounded Security. Towards an Urban Anthropology of Neighborhood Associations for Security in the City of La Plata, Argentina

The comprehension of the different dimensions, modes and manners in which urban policing and the securitarian problem is built, is the task this paper intends to achieve. In this sense, we will focus in the urban space of La Plata city, its peripheries and the various actors related to neighborhood watch and community safety. We will intend an ethnographical approach in a fieldwork that includes instant messaging applications, public polices, agenda and methodological considerations. In this sense, we take part in the efforts that exist in academical and political domains, in order to explain the protagonist role of policing demands, and new forms of governmentality, signed by conservative electoral tendencies. In societies defined as “postneoliberals” (Sozzo, 2016), the question about the cultural groundings (Kusch, 2007) and conditions of possibilities (Tiscornia, 2004) for repressive discourses and practices to expand and be composed, remains
inhabited. General and conceptual problems related to the region will be the first topic, while the second part will focus in the fieldwork in course with neighbor ensembles and associations, being produced inside the limits of La Plata city.