In recent decades, the diffusion of social promotion programs in the Argentine countryside has contributed to set up a new set of institutions of the State as well as new sources of income for populations who were not reached by that sort of public policy previously. The article analyzes the irruption of the social programs in an Andean region of the North of Argentina, and how are consequently reconfigured the lifestyles of residents vis-à-vis the production of new State practices. With an ethnographic approach, it is observed that from the meeting of the diverse regulation logics that predominate both at the State and at the communitarian levels, derive different representations and modes of articulation with public institutions, and hence, the social programs are redefined. Among the conclusions stand out that both the universe of values and meanings that rules at community life, and the personalization of anonymous categories which are formulated the social programs, operate as basic mechanisms in the process of resignification of the latter.
peasants; publics' policies; State; community; politics practices