Distancing itself from the formal models that have served as an axis for studies of collective action and social movements, this article seeks to reinstate the lived dimension of political engagement. Basing itself on the ethnographic analysis of a set of neighbourhoods in Greater Buenos Aires, it explores the multiple and heterogeneous ways in which people become involved in the so-called movimentos piqueteros. It indicates that these experiences become intelligible through their inscription in a wider plot of relations and possibilities. Starting from a figurational perspective, the text discusses some of the assumptions of the literature on piquetero organization, in particular, and social movements more generally; it questions that dichotomy between material reason and politico-moral reason through which the question of the motivations of collective action have been addressed; it is mistrustful of a rigid opposition between the State and social movements, pointing to the creative - and not merely co-optive - character of state policies; and, finally, it proposes to sociologize the locus of the "the pleasure of doing" in the origin and continuity of political engagement.
Collective Action; Ethnography; Politics; Economy; Pleasure of doing; Piquetero Movements; Argentina
