Patients of the State: The Politics of Waiting in Argentina

Acknowledgments

acknowledgments Unbeknownst to my colleague Débora Swistun, this book was first conceived in a conversation with her. Thank you, Débora, for planting the seed. Once I began thinking about waiting, I needed a site to conduct the research, and my dear friend Esteban suggested a few. Esteban, it’s all your fault. Agustín Burbano de Lara, Nadia Finck, and Shila Vilker were not only diligent research assistants but, most importantly, intellectual partners. This book draws upon many of the conversations I had with them over the years. I would also like to extend my heartfelt thanks to my current research collaborator, Flavia Bellomi. She not only provided key material for this book but also constantly forces me to think harder and clearer about the plight of the urban poor and about the larger implications of what we do as social scientists. Megan Comfort, Matthew Desmond, Lauren Joseph, Rodrigo Hobert , Nicolette Manglos, Loïc Wacquant, and Christine Williams commented on parts of this manuscript. Thanks to all of you for your critical insights. Luciana Pol at Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales kindly shared statistics on prison population and her numerous insights on the dynamics behind the explosive growth of incarceration; Christian Gruenberg helped me in locating hard-to-find figures on evictions; Nicolette Manglos, Nicole Angotti, and Pamela Neumann edited parts of this manuscript and made very helpful (substantive and stylistic) suggestions—deep thanks to you all. Generous funding for this project was provided by the National Science Foundation, Award ses-0739217; by two Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Faculty Travel Grants awarded by the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin Ameri- xii acknowledgments can Studies (llilas) and by the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Professorship. Since I moved to Austin, Paloma Diaz, llilas’s senior program coordinator, has been a wonderful compañera; as a steady source of ideas and an instant problemsolver, she made me work harder and better—all the while being an endless source of fun. Thanks to her for making my (and my family’s) life in Austin and at the University of Texas such a wonderful experience. Thanks also to the former and current chairs of the Department of Sociology, Robert Hummer and Christine Williams, for making sure that my transition to my new academic home was as smooth as possible and for allowing me the time to work on this book amid a very demanding academic environment. I presented parts of this book at the conference Violence in Latin America: New Realities, Emerging Representations, which was organized by the Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of Texas, Austin. I also presented parts at the Global Metropolitan Studies Lecture Series at the University of California, Berkeley; at the Anthropology Department of the University of Pennsylvania ; at the Simon Fraser University’s Latin American Studies Center; at the Facultad de Comunicación Social at the Universidad de La Plata; at the Seminario Permanente de Investigación Cualitativa (Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani, Universidad de Buenos Aires); and at the 2010 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. Thanks to audiences at these diverse forums for their encouragement and comments. Veryearlydraftsofchapters2and3werepublishedinLatinAmerican Research Review, Sociological Forum, and the European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies/Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe; thanks to the editors and reviewers for their helpful feedback and for their permission to reproduce parts of them. I wouldalsoliketoacknowledgeWarnerBros.EntertainmentInc.forits permission to reproduce the quote from the opening scene of Casablanca ,andBeaconPressfortheirpermissiontoreproduceexcerptsfrom Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’’ (Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. Copyright ∫ 2010 by the Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr. Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press, Boston). ...