�Political clientelism� is a term used to characterize the contemporary relationships between political elites
and the poor in Latin America in which goods and services are traded for political favors. Javier Auyero critically
deploys the notion in Poor People�s Politics to analyze the political practices of the Peronist Party among shantytown
dwellers in contemporary Argentina.
Looking closely at the slum-dwellers� informal problem-solving networks, which are necessary for material survival,
and the different meanings of Peronism within these networks, Auyero presents the first ethnography of urban clientelism
ever carried out in Argentina. Revealing a deep familiarity with the lives of the urban poor in Villa Paraíso,
a stigmatized and destitute shantytown of Buenos Aires, Auyero demonstrates the ways in which local politicians
present their vital favors to the poor and how the poor perceive and evaluate these favors. Having penetrated the
networks, he describes how they are structured, what is traded, and the particular way in which women facilitate
these transactions. Moreover, Auyero proposes that the act of granting favors or giving food in return for votes
gives the politicians� acts a performative and symbolic meaning that flavors the relation between problem-solver
and problem-holder, while also creating quite different versions of contemporary Peronism. Along the way, Auyero
is careful to situate the emergence and consolidation of clientelism in historic, cultural, and economic contexts.
Poor People�s Politics reexamines the relationship between politics and the destitute in Latin America, showing
how deeply embedded politics are in the lives of those who do not mobilize in the usual sense of the word but who
are far from passive. It will appeal to a wide range of students and scholars of Latin American studies, sociology,
anthropology, political science, history, and cultural studies.