Revista de Antropología Social (ISSN 1131-558X, ISSN-e 1988-2831) aims to provide Social and Cultural Anthropology with an active, broad and rigorous space to present the most recent and innovative anthropological research from around the world. It is open to all the theoretical-methodological and ethnographic studies of socio-cultural processes, paying particular attention to the most relevant and current issues. It includes articles that focus on specific topics (coordinated by specialists) and others that are open to any area. It is divided into two sections: articles and reviews. Occasionally it publishes debates, reports and interviews with well-known intellectuals and anthropologists.
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“Because we felt annoyed”. Emotions in the production of the political action of children that live in an occupied house
Modern thought has been configured in dichotomies such as adulthood/infancy and thinking/feeling, which are synthesized in a permanent division between the rational and the irrational from where human action has been analyzed. However, anthropology has developed several lines of work that problematize these schemes providing alternative views on childhood and on political mobilization. In this same sense, and from an extensive ethnographic study, we propose to analyze the ways in which children between the ages of 8 and 15 living in an occupied house from the City of Buenos Aires produce collective political actions rooted in their shared emotions.
"Achieving a healthy baby": The online representations of embryonic screening and diagnosis by Spanish fertility clinics
Embryonic genetic testing consists of two distinct techniques: The Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD/PGT-M & PGT-SR) and Preimplantation Genetic Screening (PGS/PGT-A). While PGD is used in cases where people are known to be carriers of a genetic disease they wish to avoid transferring to their offspring, PGS is offered to “healthy” people undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) in order to increase the success rates of the fertility treatment. This article takes its point of departure in this distinction between “diagnosis” and “screening” in order to analyze the discourses on embryo selection that Spanish fertility clinics (re)produce through their means of online communication. The constant confusion between these techniques identified in the empirical material is interpreted as the symptom of a transformation within the field of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs), in which the aim is no longer limited to the creation of babies, but rather “healthy” babies.
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Between bussiness and "friendship": an analysis of management practices and the moral dimensions of drug dealing in rural contexts
In our country, drug trafficking is highly prevalent. Its analysis has predominantly focused on disadvantages urban neighborhoods; however, in recent years it has begun to expand into rural areas. This study is based on a qualitative analysis of interviews with sellers (N=16) who distribute cocaine and marijuana in two municipalities in the province of Ávila. The objective is to trace their trajectories and analyze the management of their commercial networks, exploring the moral logics that sustain them. The results contribute to advancing knowledge about how these networks operate in closed markets, showing that sales practices are shaped by various ethical commitments and are crucially influenced by community norms.
The beginnings of Food Anthropology in Spain (1950-1975)
Although it is difficult to speak of anthropology of food until the 1980s, some of the ethnographies carried out in Spain between 1950 and 1975 raised reflections on food uses and practices that can contribute to a better understanding of some of the current research in this field. This article focuses on some ethnographies that, because of their contributions, could be considered as forerunners for current Food Anthropology in Spain. It is not so much a scholarly exercise but an attempt to show how research carried out decades ago introduced some concepts and questions which, analysed with different methodologies, maintain their relevance. To this end, after some contextual references, this text focuses on the contributions made by José María Arguedas, Susan Tax Freeman, Ramón Valdés and Renate Lellep who, from different but convergent positions, payed special attention to questions related to food that arise in their ethnographies.
Ruin, monument and simulacrum at the University City in Madrid
In the context of the Spanish War, the University City of Madrid was the scene of an intense trench battle that contributed to building a long authoritarian period that produced a dense material history of ruins, rubble, monuments and specters that haunt the present. In this contribution we make this territory a device for inquiry into the ways in which Francoism constructed memory and oblivion around its own past. From a material and spatial perspective, we critically analyze the meanings in tension that intersect in this territory from a series of units of different nature and scale, taken as a constellation; models of destruction and utopia, airplanes as monuments and evidence, landscapes produced by reforestation projects, orientalist evocations, imperial trials out of time, monuments of the future. Later we analyze some links between this legacy and memory practices, proposing new lines of approach.
Beyond the mass graves: an ethnography in/from the laboratory of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH)
This paper contributes to the study of the Spanish memorial movement based on the ethnography of the laboratory of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH). Beyond mass graves, the struggle for memory is sustained in invisible spaces such as this one. Our fieldwork pays attention to its daily life, collaborating with scientific staff, activists, volunteers and members of the association who work in/from the laboratory. Engaging in documentary research and tracing the reconstruction phases of a case, we will move ethnographically from paper to earth and beyond, following the traces of archives, libraries, names, bones and memories. Our work reveals how the laboratory functions as a social infrastructure, a relational space that, by fighting against oblivion, seeks to dignify the victims and reinforce the democratic culture of our society.
The silences in memories. Dialogues with indigeneous women about genocidal practices
In this article, we explore the autobiographical memories of Mapuche women in the Olavarría district (Buenos Aires province, Argentina), with the aim of bringing visibility to experiences of structural violence and historically silenced genocidal practices. From an anthropological approach, incorporating gender and intersectional perspectives, we analyze how territorial dispossession, the prohibition of the indigenous language, and silences shape contemporary processes of ethnic identification. Additionally, we examine collective traumas as persistent traces of colonial and state violence that permeate the narratives of the participants. The main findings highlight the significance of family memories as tools for identity reconstruction and healing. In sum, the work contributes to memory studies and indigenous studies by analyzing the autobiographical narratives of these actors as political practices of reconstruction and intergenerational transmission of ancestral memories in scenarios of dispossession and conflict from a situated approach.
Frenzied monkeys: Imaginaries of Subhuman Slavery in the Literary Racism of José de la Cuadra
Starting from a Latin American literary corpus that explores the relationships of humanity and rebellion of monkeys, we focus on the specific development practiced by the Ecuadorian storyteller José de la Cuadra (1903-1941). As the monkey appears as a trained slave, whose miserable life unfolds between energetic and sexual slavery, and object subhumanity, we aim to undertake an anthropological approach to this production, all within the context of the Latin American Primatological Park.
Disputing cultural policies for the Argentine circus in times of pandemic and post-pandemic
This article analyzes a contested terrain within the realm of cultural policies that transcends the exclusively state sphere, focusing on the processes of politicization driven by historically marginalized and/or subalternized sectors. Through their demands, these groups influence the configuration of public policy, with variable outcomes in terms of effectiveness. The study centers on the organization of circus artists and their demands for recognition and specific policies for the sector. It examines the period between 2019 and 2023, during which the circus entered for the first time on the official agenda of national cultural policy. The research studies the evolution of relations between the artists and the state during the pandemic and post-pandemic period, highlighting both achievements and the complexities, frictions, advancements, and setbacks. The data utilized derive from various sources, including conventional methods of anthropological research such as interviews and participant observation, as well as collaborative approaches that were deployed through my active involvement in the field.
Habitar la investigación etnográfica entre saberes y prácticas
Fernández García, Sandra (ed.). (2025). Teoría y práctica de la investigación etnográfica. Una propuesta metodológica. Madrid: Ed. Trotta.
Lengua y poder en Guinea Ecuatorial: una perspectiva glotopolítica
Castillo-Rodríguez, Susana. (2025). Lengua, cultura y glotopolítica en Guinea Ecuatorial: Una mirada histórica. Madrid: Iberoamericana, Vervuert.
Affection as Resistance Strategy in a Women's Prison
Academic literature on prisons usually focuses on the negative aspects of these institutions, as well as on the so-called “pains of imprisonment” (Sykes, 1958), which refer to all the deprivations that incarcerated people suffer daily and structurally. But prisons can also be spaces in which “good things happen” (Jewkes, 2015: xi) and whose logics of surveillance and control are opposed by the production of various resistance practices by the inmates; practices that also help with personal (re)construction and self-affirmation. Affection is one of them. The objective of this article is to show the production of (self-)care and affection in a women's prison. For it, I will analyse relationships and support networks between them with the school as a backdrop, highlighting how it facilitated encounters and the way in which women described its importance and influence in their lives. The purpose of the article is to highlight, through the speeches of the protagonists, that prisons can be ambiguous spaces and that, beyond the diverse and evident layers of violence that cross them, they also offer loopholes for affection and care.
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The Desire of the Laws and the Laws of Desire: LGBT+ Prisoners in the Latin American Confinement Labyrinth
In this article I analyze different models of management of sexual and gender diversity in prison in the context of the emergence of specific rights for LGBT+ prisoners in Brazil and Mexico. My proposal is based on a multi-situated ethnography in the largest metropolitan regions of Latin America: São Paulo and Ciudad de México. I realized participant observation in male prisons, interviews with survivors from incarceration, activists and state agents, as well as broad bibliographic research. After reviewing and analyzing previous regimes of management of gender and sexual differences in confinement institutions, I argue that the recent creation of new subjects of rights (such as LGBT+ prisoners) can reinforce structural contradictions of Latin American criminal justice systems.
Carceral Domesticity: Care and Optimistic Coercion in Prisoners’ Households, Chile
This research examines how Chilean crime prevention policies deploy a distinctive form of optimistic coercion that operates through practices of care in households affected by incarceration. The Chilean state maintains an ambivalent stance toward prisoners' families, simultaneously viewing them as potential risk factors and as victims requiring preventive intervention and care. Through an analysis of women heads of household participating in anti-crime programs, this study reveals how carceral domesticity functions as a control mechanism that contains—both spatially and temporally—populations deemed prone to deviance. The concept of carceral domesticity illuminates how coercion operates by confining and stigmatizing domestic spaces in low-income communities. This research demonstrates that carceral domesticity, fundamentally intertwined with the policing of social order, serves as a mechanism for containing tensions arising from intersecting forms of inequality: gender hierarchies, class antagonisms, and colonial violence.
“You have to endure it”: Institutional moralities, gender imaginaries and performances of change in Nicaraguan prisons
In Nicaragua, the penitentiary system claims to work toward prisoners’ “change of attitude” through “penal reeducation”, understood here as a system of patriarchal care that seeks to maintain notions of respectable masculinity and the heteronormative family, which are also promoted in the community policing model. Reproducing stigma rooted in moral notions marked by gender and class, these state policies generate particularly “disposable” subjects in the social imaginary, ready to be detained, incarcerated and worked upon through both sociopolitical and penal practices of exclusion and control. Once inside prison, the patriarchal penal violence and care that the prisoners are subjected to inevitably impacts their performances of “change”. Drawing from long-term ethnographic prisons research, this article exposes both the gendered workings of penal reeducation and the notions of masculinity that the participants in reeducational programs deploy and confront to (re)present their “change of attitude”, contributing as such a critical gender analysis to the study of Latin American prisons.
The Shield of the Word: Testimonies of Central American Women in Immigration Detention Centers in Texas, United States
Central American migrant women fleeing violence are embarking on a migratory exodus whose objective is at the crossing of the border between Mexico and the United States. This article explores the experience of these women who, upon crossing the border, become "criminals" because they lack the documents required to enter the country legally. The vast majority are detained in immigration detention centers. The unit of analysis in this study is constituted by the testimonies-narratives produced by women who, seeking asylum, have crossed the border with their children and have just been separated from them by the Zero Tolerance policy imposed by the Trump administration in 2018. Specifically, it is the letter-testimonies in which they denounce the dehumanization and cruelty of migration policies that guide this article.
“Puertas Adentro”: Migración, género y poder en el servicio doméstico
Over the last two decades, anthropology's interest in the study of prisons has grown significantly, although most academic output focuses on the Anglo-Saxon world and/or is written in English. Based on four thematic areas: inside/outside connections, gender, agency and resistance, and the (post)colonial nature of these institutions, and in dialogue with a brief overview of the current state of the art, this text presents the anthropological research included in the monograph, developed in an international context (Africa, Latin America, the United States, and Europe) and written or translated into Spanish.
Abriendo camino, dejando huella. La antropología feminista como desafío
Se trata de una reseña del libro La antropología feminista como desafío, coeditado por Mari Luz Esteban y Miren Guilló en 2023.
Gender, inequalities and resistance in prison: a feminist view of the reality of imprisoned women in the Basque Country
The purpose of this article is to approach the experiences of imprisoned women in the Basque Country, based on the results of an ethnographic study carried out from a feminist perspective with women imprisoned in Araba and Gipuzkoa penitentiary centers. Specifically, three topics are analyzed: firstly, the gender inequalities existing in the prison context; secondly, the experiences, opinions, impressions and assessments of imprisoned women; and, finally, the resistance practices developed by imprisoned women to try to overcome, neutralize or mitigate the consequences of imprisonment, addressing the issue of their agency, often undervalued and invisibilized. This way, understanding prison as a gender institution, the goal is to delve into its oppressive and restrictive nature, but without denying or underestimating the capacity of imprisoned women to act and transform certain situations.
Women, Crime, Punishment: Contributions to the Study of Female Security
In this article I propose to think of the crime-security nexus following the paradigm of human security, encompassing "physical security (security against violence and crime) and material security (security against poverty and deprivation)" (Kaldor, 2020:1). In studying gender (in)security from the perspective of women offenders, I question the relationships between the motives that mobilize the practice of crime and the experiences lived by these women and their self-awareness of security, and how they are affected by environmental variables, political, economic, cultural and social. My purpose is to advance the premise that crime, in the female context as action can be interpreted as a strategy, a confrontation, or an alternative to the state apparatus, that is, a means to achieve security.
Prison tied to the body. A feminist analysis of the extension of punishment through the electronic monitoring
This article analyses the electronic monitoring as one of the modalities of compliance in semi-freedom for persons deprived of liberty in the Spanish context and how this is experienced by female prisoners. I explore this modality of serving a sentence, within what I call the penitentiary labyrinth of women offenders, and I wonder about the ways in which this context of punishment reproduces gender constructions that are deployed outside the prison institution. Telematic control is the technological tool capable of extending state surveillance to places that have not traditionally been observed, the home, showing how punishment experiences transcend prison.
Uses and imaginaries of prison in Guinea
uinea is characterized by a low incarceration rate of 38 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants (World Prison Brief, 2024)[1] and by the importance of alternative dispute resolution. Nevertheless, prison occupies an important place in the history of this country. Since its establishment in Guinea, the authorities have mobilized it as a political tool that manifests violence and arbitrariness. It also plays an economic role by putting prisoners to work in the colonial era and then by extorting new prisoners within its walls. In addition, the prison produces a stain that requires the released prisoner to perform a purification ritual. Based on colonial archives preserved in the National Archives of Guinea and on an ethnography of the current prison system, we discuss continuities and ruptures in the use of prisons in Guinea as well as in the production of its imaginaries. In doing so, we contribute to the integration of prison issues on the African continent into the global debate on confinement.
Aproximaciones etnográficas a la propiedad, la domesticación, las taxonomías y las actitudes hacia los animales en poblaciones amerindias
Socio-anthropological tools for Investigating (Trans)Feminist Cultural/Artistic Experience: Observation and Dissemination
Since the beginning of the 21st century the processes of artistic creation linked to feminisms and trans collectives are intertwined with ethical, aesthetic, and political decisions within situated social and cultural experiences. In this dialogue, there is a growing body of (trans)feminist studies that examine art and its practices, as well as art studies that explore sociocultural issues within this framework. From this intersection emerge novel reflections between creation/experimentation/research, the revision of explanatory categories, and the reconfiguration of methodological tools in each field. Drawing from qualitative research based on cultural/artistic experience from (trans)feminist perspective between Spain and Argentina, this article retrieves and examines the process of (re)elaboration of two tools developed in the methodologies of research in Art and critical Social Sciences (ethnography observation to and knowledge dissemination). We suggest that the (trans)feminist cultural/artistic experience as an analytical and methodological category generates reflections for socio-anthropologic research and research on/in artistic practices, producing knowledge for both fields of study and/or an area to be explored in development.
Situating ourselves in the problem: autoethnographic reflections on the construction of a feminist research project
The article presents an autoethnographic narrative about the embodied and situational dimension of the construction of a research proposal. We will analyze how the formulation of an ethnographic feminist project on the experiences of social scientists was part of a trajectory shared by the authors for almost a decade, intertwining work experiences and emotional ties. We will see that the motivation to propose the project –in its questions, objectives, methodologies– is woven from this common experience. We will start by discussing what we understand by a feminist (auto)ethnography, and recounting our journey as research colleagues: the dismantling of a network of academic women, the processes of editorial censorship, and our overloads of family care and professional work. We will then show how all this gave rise to a research proposal on gender inequalities in Latin American social sciences. We conclude by highlighting, from a feminist perspective, three critical aspects to situate ourselves in the research problem.
The right to identity between local dramas and global categories. The “Argentine articles” of the Convention on the Rights of the Child
Articles 7, 8 and 11 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) protect the right to identity and because of the work of Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo in its drafting they are known as "the Argentine articles". From an ethnographic perspective and on the basis of in-depth interviews with those who participated in the debate and drafting of the Convention, this text analyzes the process by which –through the construction of networks of relationships and consensus among various actors– the right to identity was included in this legislation. The analysis reveals, on the one hand, how vernacular concepts can be translated into the language of global human rights law and generate categories that make it possible to construct new rights. And on the other hand, how Latin American activism, and that of other countries of the global South, influenced the global arena and proposed other views on children and violations of their rights in the process of drafting the Convention.
«Emociones ghosting», una economía emocional entre la subjetividad individual y la relacionalidad
El solapamiento actual de distintos modelos afecto-relacionales desvela gran complejidad y flexibilidad en las relaciones contemporáneas, al disgregar los ámbitos de la sexualidad, el amor, la domesticidad o los cuidados. Dentro del ámbito del estudio de las nuevas formas de relación afectivo-sexuales, este artículo presenta los resultados de una investigación etnográfica llevada a cabo en Madrid, a través de tres casos que muestran cómo los agentes abordan la negociación de los límites entre la individualidad y la relacionalidad. La tensión que emerge entre ambas dimensiones –como efecto de las significaciones otorgadas a las nociones de independencia-dependencia por parte de los agentes– supone una paradoja a resolver. En dicha tarea, se pone en juego un patrón de limitación de prácticas emocionales que hemos denominado emociones ghosting. Esta noción se plantea como una herramienta analítica útil para abordar los patrones, tanto de establecimiento como de mantenimiento de relaciones, más allá de los procesos de incertidumbre y desregulación que caracterizan el panorama actual.