Institutional Violence and Political Culture

Abstract

The subject addressed by this research is the forms of production and reproduction of political culture in the province of Tucumán, with special attention to the traces that the persistence over time of the phenomenon of social inequality has generated, and continues to generate, within that culture.

Along these lines, the research assumes a comprehensive concept of political culture, defined by a dialectic between so-called institutional or State culture and citizen culture, with special attention to the interobjective elements that compose them.

The customs, forms of knowledge, values, and attitudes that inform the actions and structures of the State reach citizens in different ways. The reception, elaboration, and signification of these elements by an agent—necessarily mediated by their personal trajectory—implies a particular interpretation of the rules of the game and their legitimacy. At the same time, such interpretations will generally acquire meaning and be framed within the groups to which agents belong, and within which these interpretations situate practices and discourses.

From this approach, the study of political culture implies the need for an analysis of the functional structures of the State, with particular attention to the messages emanating from them, on the one hand, and to the contents present in citizen perceptions, on the other.

Some advances have made it possible to identify violent institutional practices—discriminatory practices—arising from, and made possible by, the very functional organization of the State, as well as the naturalization of such violence in both institutional and citizen culture. These elements begin to outline a political culture with violent contents.