The emergence of political innovations to communal democracy. Contributions from a feminist organization experience: Casa Comunidad

Abstract

Assuming communal democracy as an emerging process of experimentation, struggle and continuous construction, directs our gaze towards the assessment of the contributions made by those political movements that are forged in the heat of resistance to the relationships and institutions of the current capitalist, patriarchal, racist and colonial society. This article pulls the reflection towards an experience of political activism which is part of the contemporary feminist movement in Argentina. From a qualitative case approach, we address the following question: what are the emerging political contributions that the experience of the feminist organization Casa Comunidad, in the city of Córdoba, Argentina, makes to communal democracy? The main result explains that there are two emerging political innovations: community self-defenses and a reorganization of care work as community work. But the emergence of these meanings and practices is inseparable from claims, demands and needs not only of its direct protagonists —women from popular neighbourhoods in the city of Córdoba— but also from other organized and struggling social sectors, contemporary and past. Our results aim to provide theoretical and empirical elements to, on the one hand, specify what the emerging nature of communal democracy practices means; and, on the other, to value the contributions of the feminist movement in Argentina which, as part of a broader Latin American experience, offers keys to "doing democratic" that dispute the diagnoses that simply assume the stagnation, low quality or political disaffection of our societies regarding democracy.