Recently arrived

A week ago I arrived in Buenos Aires, the city that never sleeps and which is described in the traveller’s bible Lonely Planet as an “electrifying city”. My aim is to perform a field study of how different actors understand the responsibility for the state of the Argentinean environment. An obvious starting point for comparison from a Swedish perspective is the public transportation system, since public transportation often is mentioned as a “greener” alternative to travelling by car. I am consequently attempting to understand “La Guia T”, along with the map. La Guia, or The Transportation Guide Book, is an excellent booklet that covers all the hundreds of buses that crisscross the city, day and night. On each of the 42 pages that cover the central area of Buenos Aires, the map is divided into smaller units, and on the opposite side the node is correlated with the buses that pass by. It makes up an intricate system of street names, bus numbers and coordinates. In distinction to all the things that may seem disorganized here, the streets are properly numbered so that you can keep yourself posted on your position as the bus advances from one place to the other. For example, when you pass Plaza Italia on Avenida Santa Fe with Bus number 152, you will know that the numbers on the houses to your right will stretch from 4200 to 4100. Very orderly. But as an anthropologist, it strikes me how thoroughly connected the bird’s perspective of the map is with the understanding of the social context and the local surrounding of buildings, parks, streets and neighbourhoods. Thereby the attempt to understand La Guia and the map is a suitable metaphor for my attempt to understand the city and the culture, in order to be able to make sense of the processes that interests me. As the bus moves on I see grafitti covered walls outside of the window, publicity for local and national politicians, ads for shampoo and Coca Cola, and one of the many professional dog-walkers (or paseaperros as they are known in the local language) that manage a dozen of dogs in a the net of leashes. I lay my eyes on some governmental posters that say that good citizens need to throw garbage in the rubbish bins, and another that say that people should not use as many plastic bags since they contaminate the water system. These posters seem very much in line with the campaign “Keep Sweden Tidy” that managed to construct a norm of cleanliness in Sweden, which makes it amoral to litter. As we pass the posters, the bus driver stops and lets more travellers to enter, and I notice how a woman asks for change of a 2 pesos bill for some coins. The issue of monedas, or coins for the bus ride, has reached huge dimensions lately when the prices for a ride went up from 1 peso to 1 peso and 10 cents. The bus driver doesn’t change bills and therefore you need to hold on to the change when you pay for something if you want to be able to get on a bus. I have learned that if someone asks if you can change a bill – you simply lie, and hold on to your precious bus money.

My intent is to devote at least a year for this project and this field study of the Argentine society, and the position of environmental politics here. Even if this is not my first encounter with the city or the porteño culture, I feel a bit shy and insecure. Will my ideas make sense? Will it be possible to accomplish the projects which I have been planning and thinking about for months mainly during sleepless nights? Will my research experience of field work from Sweden and Mexico be enough? And not the least, will I be able to concentrate on the projects when there are so many electrifying attractions around? Another issue that strikes me, and remember that anthropological field work is a lot about reflection, is that the idea to use the transportation system as an introduction to “the field” was something which entered my mind several months ago. Does this mean that I am only confirming existing ideas rather than discovering them? However, the whole idea of “discovery” is something which I myself have been criticizing from a postcolonial perspective since it carries the notion that it is possible to get to “know the other”. So, lacking better ways to describe what it is that I aim to do, I will simply state that I want to learn to view the world from the perspectives of the actors that are involved in the environmental politics here in Argentina.

Since I still have projects to work on in Sweden, I cannot yet fully devote myself to the field work, and I can only attempt to get in touch with contacts that I believe will be important, and keep my mind open towards issues that seem significant. In line with the aim to document the field work I have signed up for an evening course on documentary film making and I now hope that I will be able to complement the major hit “Body Politics in the Bathroom” with new videos.