Author declaration

Conflict of Interest

We wish to confirm that there are no known conflicts of interest associated with this

publication and there has been no significant financial support for this work that could

have influenced its outcome.

Author’s name (Fist, Last) Signature Date

David Luján Verón August 12, 2021

1
Yearning for protection and care. The anthropology of clientelism in Contemporary

Chile

Summary

Through a qualitative and ethnographic methodology focused on the analysis of the daily

interactions between neighborhood leaders, professional politicians and citizens of a local

Chilean context, this essay aims to point out that the observed actors mobilize resources

and skills that have as a framework of interaction the construction of images about the

State as an opaque center that distributes goods and services through personalized

political relationships. It is intended to contribute to the field of anthropology of the State,

as well as socioanthropological perspectives of clientelism, in particular, to advance in

the knowledge of how the State turns to the daily life of the people, as well as the social

and cultural substrate of the social bonds in politics.

Author: David Luján Verón

Address: Eje Central 251, int B 702, Colonia Guerrero, Alcaldía Cuauhtémoc, Mexico

City

Phone: +56 55 18 21 67 47

Affiliation: Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Universidad Autónoma

Metropolitana-Iztapalapa, Mexico City.

ORCID number: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8079-591X

2
Introduction

The contemporary discussion of what the State is, its sources of power and authority, as

well as moral duty, is far from exhausted. The discussion gets complicated because the

State is understood in many places from a normative conception (what the State should

be), from which the existing States are evaluated. This exercise, thus, could obscure,

rather than help, to understand the State on its own terms.

The findings presented here are part of the empirical material collected to prepare

our Doctoral thesis in Sociology, by the College of Mexico, defended in June 2018. The

objective of the thesis was to reconstruct the forms of negotiation, the emotional, moral,

and material aspects of reciprocal exchange, as well as the social and cultural substrate of

the daily ties in politics, from a case study, the commune of Avellaneda in Chile, whose

name we fictionalized, as well as those of our key informants, 1 to protect their identity.

The methodology consisted in observe and analyze the interactions between citizens,

neighborhood leaders, professional politicians, and municipal officials, as well as semi-

structured, informal, and spontaneous interviews with these actors. The fieldwork was

carried out between June 2016 and January 2017.

The commune of Avellaneda has a population of approximately 300,000

inhabitants. It is urban, central, with levels of unemployment and poverty slightly more

pronounced than the regional average (unemployment has a rate of 9.1, vs. 8.7 in the

region, while it has an income poverty rate of 15.42, vs. 10.08 in the region). 2 Although it

has a center with consolidated urban services, it also has a large periphery where water

service, electricity service, paving or public transport is scarce or lacking. In particular, it

is striking that the commune has a lot of hillsides, which makes the roads difficult to

3
access by car or public transport. Similarly, it has the second place in the whole territory

in number of slums: 65, according to the Techo-Chile Foundation. In this way,

Avellaneda is a commune with considerable percentages of poverty and inequality.3

This essay is divided into 5 sections. In the first part we outline the theoretical

coordinates of our research: the anthropology of the State and socioanthropological

contributions on clientelism. In the second we point out the general context of the study.

The third and fourth part are dedicated to incorporating ethnographic evidence about the

resources and skills that political representatives and citizens use in their daily

interactions to influence each other. The fifth part reconstructs the empirical section to

point out our contribution to the anthropology of the State and clientelism, as well as to

show some particularities of Chilean clientelism.

Theoretical approach

The anthropology of the State has argued with different currents in the analysis of the

State, from which it has proposed new and more complex ways of looking at this

phenomenon. In a work seminal to this approach, Phillip Abrams (1988) denounced a

certain "reification" produced by Marxist and structuralist variants in the treatment of the

State, that is, that it be conceived as a thing, entity, or object self-contained and

independent of social practices, with agency or will of its own, and that it implements

absolute power over the populations it governs. For him, it was necessary to "demystify

the State", that is, to analyze it through concrete practices, that is, how the actors use this

category in their relations and interactions, as well as its effects on the institutional and

power structure.

4
 The anthropology of the State, thus, bets on the centrality of the State to explain

social phenomena, and refers to the beliefs, expectations and perceptions of social actors

based on the hypothesis that representations about the State are formed in social

interaction, and that the State is experienced in daily life through its representatives at the

"street" level: political leaders, social workers, health professionals, police, judges,

firefighters, among others (Fassin, et. al. 2015; Lipsky, 2010). In this way, this

perspective argues that it is useful to pay attention to the daily interaction between state

and non-state agents in different scenarios and moments in which various "materialities"

associated with the power of the State (laws, documents, agencies, monuments) also

circulate. In addition to interactions, this approach has studied the trajectories and

genealogies of social actors and the processes by which public problems are shaped (Das

& Poole, eds. 2004; Gupta, 1995; Hansen and Stepputat, eds. 2001; Joseph and Nugent,

comps. 2002; Sharma and Gupta, eds. 2006; Yang, 2005).

Anthropologist of the State also pay close attention to the analysis of "culture",

understood as the rituals, symbols, gestures of authority, identities, subjectivities, and

interpretations, in which the State (its hierarchies, classifications and social orders), is

reproduced (Agudo & Estrada, coords., 2014, eds., 2011). This reproduction is not

considered a coherent, monolithic process where the governed population is passive, on

the contrary, it is fluid and constantly negotiated, in the sense that the agents of the State

in charge of implementing their "power" permeate their own values and judgments.

Accordingly, the governed population reappropriated the senses of State intervention on

its own terms and can mobilize in some cases resistance and subversion (Buchely, 2015;

Jaramillo and Buchely, comps. 2019; Sharma and Gupta, eds. 2006; Agudo, 2015).

5
 In addition to giving a privileged role to culture, everyday life is another focus of

analysis. The notions of "worldly life of the State" (Fassin, et. al. 2015), "micropolitics of

state work" (Sharma and Gupta, eds. 2006), or "routine work of bureaucracies" (Lipsky,

2010), seek to put on hold an absolute division between State and society and rather show

their porosity and mutual connections. For this reason, the strength of the State, despite

being publicly shown as a coherent and unified force separate from society, becomes

uncoordinated and disordered (Abrams, 1988; Mitchell, 1991). In this context of

discussion, the link between citizens and the State not only evokes interests or social

norms but also emotions, hence the latter element is also a cause for reflection (Graham,

2002; Montoya, 2015; Nuijten, 2003; Navaro-Yashin, 2006; Schwenkel, 2015).

In addition to the above concerns, one especially relevant to our discussion

framework is that aimed at understanding and explaining the social assistance practices

developed between what Lipsky called "street-level" bureaucrats (Lipsky, 2010) and the

local population (Dubois, 2020; Fassin et al., 2015, 2003; Perelmiter, 2018; Rojas, 2019;

Shijman, & Laé, 2010). Based on the study of the functioning of various state assistance

agencies (those that enable stay permits for immigrants, provide family allowances or

urgent financial aid, manage neighborhood needs, deal with poverty), emphasis has been

placed on the resources, skills, and abilities with which the population seeks to achieve

various benefits in interrelationship with the mechanisms of reading and social control

that bureaucrats develop over the assisted.

On the other hand, around clientelism, political science studies it from the

perspective of democracy, participation, and political modernization. It is defined as a

form of mediated and selective access to state goods and services, in exchange for

6
subordination, loyalty, obedience or dependence (Brusco, Nazareno and Stokes, 2004;

Stokes 2007). According from this perspective, being mediated and selective is what

distinguishes it from other forms of political linkage supposedly not conditioned on

electoral voting or support, such as programmatic policies or universal benefit

distribution (Kitschelt and Wilkinson 2012, Piattoni, 2001). Its emphasis on the electoral

aspects of the relationship has led to assimilate it to the "vote buying" and with it a

concern about the extent to which the goods and services delivered by candidates for

citizenship in the electoral campaign translate into support and political commitment

(Carlin and Moseley, 2014; Beltrán and Cornejo, 2019).

Within this current, clientelism is also considered typically coupled with the low

level of democracy of a regime and with negative effects on autonomous participation

(Fox, 1994; Brinkerhoff and Goldsmith, 2002), as well as the processes of representation

and policy-making (O'Donnell, 1996). Some readings, less condemnatory, consider that it

can empower and include citizens in the political system and even promote its

democratization, or it can fulfill redistributionist functions, although limited (van de

Walle, 2007). When one wonders from this approach what it is that makes the clientelism

endure, it is pointed out that it is the benefit of what is exchanged or the things that

circulate in this type of relations (mainly material goods); threats for cutting off

provisions if customer support disappears; or the invocation of rules of reciprocity

(Hopkin, 2006; Stokes, 2007; Kitschelt and Wilkinson, 2012).

On the other hand, within social anthropology, studies on clientelism began in the

60's within the concerns to understand the characteristics of those systems that,

supposedly, had not managed to join the ranks of modern Western democracy:

7
Mediterranean societies, Southeast Asia, and Latin America (Gellner and Waterbury, eds,

1977; Schmitt, Scott, Landé and Guasti, eds. 1977). Here the explanation of their

backwardness was explained by virtue of a series of cultural attributes, such as the

influence of family relations and their affective burden on political ties, patrimonial

leaderships or clientelism, which was defined as an asymmetrical and personal social

bond where goods or services are exchanged for loyalty. These contributions show how

social actors use the category of clientelism in their interactions and the place it occupies

within other categories with which they classify and moralize (giving positive or negative

value to) politics, as well as the social norms that articulate the long-term relationships

between clients, intermediaries, and patrons.

Subsequently, language was emphasized around care, protection, fraternity, as

well as egalitarianism, which legitimizes the clientele bond (Roniger, 1990; Roniger and

Gunes-Ataya, 1994). With the incorporation of ethnography and sociology, they delved

into the agency and creativity of clients in concrete interactions (Gay, 1994), as well as

the way in which the poor use clientelism to solve everyday survival problems (Auyero,

2001). The category of "moral economy" or "moral calculus" has also been proposed

(Vommaro and Quirós, 2011; Vommaro and Combes, 2016), to understand and explain

the moral principles that regulate exchanges in routine politics.

Within this perspective, the relationship between clientelism and collective action

also has been explored (Manzano, 2013; Quirós, 2011; Ferraudi, 2014; Lapegna and

Auyero, 2012), the social and cultural substrate of political participation and vote

(Álvarez, 2012; Hagene, 2015; Heredia, 2016; Heredia and Palmeira, 2015), as the

porous character of the categories of patron, intermediary, and client (Desmond, 2006). In

8
short, we now know thanks to these contributions that clientelism is not only a strategy of

up-down control but in two-way, which can have a contentious and belligerent

component, which is not only explained by the material dimension of the exchange but

also moral and emotional. Lastly, the expectation of integration, still provisional, of a part

of the population into the State and political representation is reproduced in clientele

bonds. Thus, it seems ideal to articulate the anthropology of the State with

socioanthropological studies on clientelism to illuminate in a more complex way the daily

interactions between patrons, intermediaries, and clients.

The general context of study

In Avellaneda, many neighbors and neighborhood leaders,4 establish daily contact with

professional politicians5 and some municipal officials (in particular, who belong to the

Community Development Area -Área de Desarrollo Comunitario- which can support

neighbors in a situation of social vulnerability), to request them favors: financial support

for the realization of certain festivities throughout the year within the neighborhood

(Mother's Day, Children's Day, National Holidays, Christmas), end of the year journeys,

as well as support in inputs or financial for the realization of activities called "solidary",

which had finally grant money to a neighbor who had an emergency situation or need

(needed to pay for an expensive medical operation, he or she was unemployed), in the

same way as defraying part of the cost to make renovations to the headquarters of the

neighborhood organization or gather part of the co-financing that the State demands of

them to apply for competitive funds.6 In short, the citizens invoked the expectation of

social assistance by partisan and state actors to manage social needs and urban problems.

9
 In addition to favors, the citizens daily requested political intermediation of

political-partisan and bureaucratic agents to initiate or expedite procedures within the

State, especially, pave the way for the provision of urban infrastructure (football fields,

public stairs in places with steep slope), as well as municipal goods and services -regular

shipment of garbage containers, pruning of trees-. In the case of the councilors

(concejales), the politicians with whom the population interacted in a more intense and

stable way over time, we could observe that the requests for help were of the most varied

nature: housing, job, permits to sale things in the streets (prohibited activity), reduce a

fine of Carabineros (the police in Chile), reduce the bill of water or electricity, among

others.7

Along with favors and political intermediation, gifts circulated in these

interactions continuously, and while citizens used to give political-partisan actors

Christmas cards, some birthday presents, political and bureaucratic actors used to give

citizens (especially neighborhood leaders) supplies for the routine leisure activities of the

organizations that led the latter, such as food in the case of mother centers and senior

clubs, or soccer balls and medals for sports clubs.

What we would like to draw attention to these elements is that client relationships,

in this context, articulate a series of actors that could hardly characterize their

relationships as episodic or that are explained simply from a material exchange, as

assumed by much of the literature in political science. On the contrary, they evoke,

through the circulation of gifts, favors and political intermediation, a stable and intense

relationship in the time in which affections circulate and a specific morality related to

giving and receiving in politics, which refers to disinterest as a principle of social

10
regulation (Wilkis, 2010), and to a series of qualitative calculations about what is

exchanged: the social actors are routinely delineating what to give and how often, and

their value lies, more than in what is worth in monetary terms, what it symbolizes to

initiate or update a social bond through the expression of affection, appreciation, security,

and consideration for the needs of others.

Derived from the above, much of the legitimacy that political-partisan and

bureaucratic actors can accumulate at the local level lies in their ability to manage social

needs daily and “on the ground” (en terreno). Their task, rather than being defined in

formal terms, is recreated from an informal, but powerful and routinized, expectation that

they govern the territory in a personalized way. For this reason, the citizens used to

classify and rank the political field among those "cold" representatives: those who spend

their time in their office and do not know neither the local needs nor the actors who

inhabit it (negatively valued), and those who "give them heat", that is, who listen

patiently to the problems of the neighbors and, when they do this, they are noticed

worried (valued positively). Political representatives, therefore, are not only asked to be

transmission belts between citizens and the political system, as much of democratic

theory has assumed (Dahl, 1972), but to be emotionally affected when they listen to the

needs of neighbors. Seeing them affected, from the point of view of the citizenry, showed

their commitment and social closeness with the affected population, in the same way that

other ethnographies of the State have pointed out (Montoya, 2015; Schwenkel, 2015).

Access to the State

Sofia is a leader of a help center for adults with disabilities. She has temporary jobs

(childcare, sales promoter), among which is the work in campaign for the Christian

11
Democracy -Democracia Cristiana- (DC)8 from time to time. One of the neighbors in the

area where she lives recently lost her house to a fire, and she looked for a way to get

emergency housing in the municipality (local government). 9 In the respective office

(Desarrollo Económico), she received some requirements to provide the house (that the

person through whom she mediated had the title to the land where he lived, was a

resident of the commune, and met a state of socio-economic vulnerability by means of a

report issued by a social worker of the municipality). After carrying the respective

documentation, the head of the office in charge pointed out to her that, unfortunately,

there were no more housing available.

This response, Sofia argued, violated the rights to receive state care if the

stipulated requirements were met. Seeking to mobilize help to the neighbor, she went

with the councilors. In his conversations with these actors, Councilman Ramon told her

that there was a municipal fund to deal with this type of emergency, and this encouraged

her not to give up in his efforts, although she did not get favorable answers.

Within the political campaign at the municipal level and while she was doing

political work (promoting the vote) for Gabriel, the candidate for mayor of the New

Majority (Nueva Mayoría), she met a reporter from El Mercurio.10 Taking advantage of

the meeting, she explained the case, hoping that he could publish a note in the newspaper

to mobilize the help of a philanthropist or state agent. He told her he couldn't do anything

but gave her the phone of a reporter from La Estrella, who once contacted offered to

make a note of the situation.11 The following Saturday the situation was published in the

newspaper, and a couple of days later officials of the municipality disseminated through

social networks a video handing over the house.

12
 Sofia's efforts to access to the State assets vividly exemplify the situation that

prevails in Avellaneda: the municipality, according to the point of view of the

neighborhood leaders, is a space that can only be entered "hinchando”, “mosqueando",

"cateteando", that is, constantly asking in the municipal offices for the status of its

procedure, not for formal regulations that establish time and fixed forms. In this scenario

where, like Auyero's study (2011), the State is dark and opaque, a producer of confusion

and uncertainty, the citizens seek to mobilize personal contacts within the bureaucracy or

the political-partisan world to initiate or expedite procedures. In this way, let’s tell Sofia's

story to account for the resources and skills that the poor use to access state goods and

services through clientelism. We seek to problematize the "miserabilistic" images about

the poor, that is, as subordinates or passive and from the totalizing prism of asymmetry

that, for many authors, is the main characteristic of patron-client ties.

Sofia said that the State should take care of people's problems as long as the

criteria established by the State associated with the vulnerability of the applicant were

met. Although much of the literature on clientelism has argued that this, being sustained

in a "policy of favors", would be opposed to the "politics of rights" (O'Donnell, 1996), in

the sense that in the first the allocation of goods and services of the State is uncertain,

individual, and does not seek to resolve the structural inequalities of society, unlike the

second where its allocation is stable, the provision is directed to groups rather than

individuals, and seeks to resolve structural inequalities, what we observed in our research

is that numerous neighborhood leaders and neighbors argued that the attention, especially

of the councilors, should be constant, either because they had voted for the one to whom

they requested assistance, because these political actors were "representatives of the

13
community" and therefore were morally obliged to listen to and attend to the problems of

the neighbors on a constant basis.

Therefore, in this context operates what Gabriel Vommaro calls "rights of the

poor" (2017), and Emilia Shijman together with Jean-François Laé: "profane rights"

(2010). The idea of "rights" here refers not to the legal but moral component of political

inclusion, that is, the search by citizens to stabilize the provision of goods and services by

invoking the duty of the State to care for and protect its population, especially the most

vulnerable. Since these rights are not formally instituted, they depend on the resources

and skills that citizens can mobilize in their personalized political relationships with

partisan and bureaucratic actors. Without these relations, the citizens consider that it is

not possible to access the State, a process that has been called "fetishization" of the

political intermediary (Nuijten, 2003).

Numerous transcripts of the field diary give an account of the “performatic” 12

process by which the neighborhood leaders and neighbors sought to capture the attention

of the councilors and commit them to attend their demands. First, they explained to the

councilors that their suffering was not a sham and that they genuinely required help, for

which they expressed in depth in their daily tribulations and evidence, such as the water

or electricity bills that they had to pay, or photographs that allowed them to ascertain

various socio-economic deficiencies. The greater the request for support, the longer the

story that justified it, and in the most serious tribulations – the seek for financial support

to cope with a harsh situation of poverty, for example - the citizens showed tears and

despair.

14
 Along with the exhibition of necessity, we observe the mobilization of “social

deserving”. The citizens expressed to the councilors that they asked them for help

because they were already striving to solve their problems and that only a "push" was

needed, something "small but very valuable", the most urgent or the easiest to solve.

From the point of view of the citizens, the support received could be understood as a

"reward for effort", while seeking to lower the costs of cooperation of the authorities to

make their endowment more likely. "Deserving" help, in this way, requires a quota of

inventiveness, ability to act to solve personal problems, and its correct exposure in social

interaction if it wants to cause the desired effect.

Third, citizens invoked bonds of social and physical closeness,13 as well as

familiarity, for their demands to be attended. Social closeness was shown through

affection, the suspension of hierarchies (emphasizing, for example, that they had known

councilors for a long time and conversed with them not only in formal but also informal

spaces in which they shared food and intimate conversations in which they updated their

social bonds). It was also common for them to seek physical closeness, that is, physical

contact through a greeting and hug that evidenced a stable and intense relationship over

time. Familiarity was expressed in the display of common attributes with the councilman

they asked for help (who lived in the same neighborhood, had friends in common, had

attended the same schools). Both social and physical closeness, as well as the display of

familiarity, were intended to reinforce a relationship of reciprocity that made rejection or

disapproval of a petition less likely.

The mobilization of closeness in its social and physical dimensions, as well as

familiarity, also sought to give evidence that the demonstration of affection, concern, care

15
and attention for the other, as well as the pleasure of contact, was more important than the

material benefits that could be derived from the interaction. The citizens, thus, defined

the situation in front of the councilors as affectively charged, through which they

humanized the politics by giving legitimacy to an exchange that, otherwise, could be seen

as a sporadic interaction in which material benefits are exchanged, which was negatively

valued.

This last point was not contradictory to the fact that, also, the citizens sought to

condition the support of the councilors by pointing out that, if they supported them: a)

there would be a flow of votes in favor of the latter, b) would allow them (to the

councilors) to attend the neighborhood to which the citizen belonged, c) the citizens say

at the first opportunity that the councilor would be a generous provisor of favors.

Finally, citizens made use of socio-state hierarchies in their interactions with

councilors. From their point of view, adapt to the positions that guide the relationship,

according to which on the one hand there is the population that "suffers" some problem,

and on the other the State and partisan actors that can, due to their investiture which

confers access to political and social capital, solve social needs. Asymmetries are thus

used to generate correspondence, reduce conflict, and point out that favor would increase

the reputation of the donor. The structure that reproduces the representative/represented

position, thus, is not something inherent to the social actors, but is constructed as part of

the interaction with specific objectives.

The State "is me"

The positive and negative valences about the legitimacy of the public bond mobilized by

the neighborhood leaders and neighbors requesting aid in Avellaneda, how were they

16
resignified by the political-partisan actors? Our research allows us to point out that

expectations about their public role (that they were daily provisors of favors, gifts and

political intermediation, affectionate, close, concerned about social needs) were

reappropriated as mechanisms of power, that is, means to participate in the political game

and gain positions within it. The activity of the councilors, as well as that of the citizens,

is also performative, so it is interesting to highlight below the resources and skills that

they used in their concrete interactions.

On one occasion, Councilman Ramon, of the Christian Democracy (DC),

expressed around the vote: "they vote for you because you are in their retina", that is, the

neighbors vote for the one they know best, who they remember because he has been in

contact with them. With the aim of "staying" in the retina of the neighbors, the councilor

managed on a daily basis goods and services. This management, in line with what was

said in the previous section, was accompanied by a routine contact in which the

reciprocal exchange was valued more by its expression as the beginning or updating of a

close and intense bond, than by some quantitative measure on the goods exchanged.

Vividly, secretary Ramon, Lucas, once put it:

Lucas: Our job is to be when they ask you to be. That they value it quite a

lot, although you do not solve any problem, but that you are there, it

already shows a different change, by the theme of the political campaign.

For example, if the lady's house is flooding, maybe you will not be able to

raise the house to the lady, but you are trying to do something, managing

something to help, you are totally validated in front of the people.

17
Daily contact and management were also expressed in the staging of social and physical

closeness. The social dimension was expressed in the fact that councilors, and to a lesser

extent deputies, regularly visited senior clubs and mother's centers at the time of their

"once", to share food with citizens. 14 There, according to the testimonies of the neighbors,

"they took off the coat", that is, their sign of status and hierarchy. On the physical

dimension, they also staged proximity, as when, upon entering the office of a deputy of

the RN (Renovación Nacional) party, we could see a large poster of him handing a gift to

an elderly person while both, with their faces very close, smiled at the camera. Also,

when visiting the citizens in their neighborhood organizations, councilors fixed the collar

of a neighbor's shirt or danced a dance piece. Both dimensions of the proximity, from the

point of view of the councilors, granted political benefits, as when the councilor Ramón

expressed: "that is what the ladies remember, not speeches, rhetoric, but concrete actions

of closeness". As can be seen in this note, more than the word (the speeches, the

rhetoric), the bond is built from the bodily sensitivity.

Familiarity was also constantly invoked. In their tours of the neighborhoods, the

councilors used to come with children, grandchildren, or wife, thus staging that the visit

was made, rather than by the search for votes, to give evidence of a certain air of

intimacy as if it were a relationship of friendship. When neighbors, on the other hand,

talk about visits, they evoke this bond to signal closeness and trust. On one occasion, a

neighbor said: “I know him well (the councilor), his wife has come", thus denoting a

close bond and, therefore, makes reciprocal exchange possible.

Along with the elements described above, the councilors presented their activity,

rather than as political, as "social". In Avellaneda, as well as in other parts of Latin

18
America due to the discrediting of politics and political parties, 15 politics was seen as

something that degraded the public bond as it divided and responded solely to individual

interests. The political-partisan actors, therefore, regularly named their activity, rather

than political, as social, that is, legitimized if they devoted themselves to caring for and

protecting especially the most vulnerable without a behind-the-scenes interest (search for

votes) or without establishing "political flags" (benefiting only those who belong to the

same current political party). Therefore, political work (establishment of political

loyalties and commitments) and social work (helping others in need) were part of the

same moral universe, a vision shared by citizens who established routine contacts with

political-party and bureaucratic authorities on the basis of social assistance.

In addition, we were able to verify that the resources shown above, which speak

of warmth and personalization of the link, were complemented by others through which

the councilors and other political-party authorities sought to encourage the belief among

citizens that only through them could the citizens access to the State. In this way, they

pointed out to the neighbors that they were defining so that the problems of the

neighborhood could be solved. If it was a question of initiating, expediting or unblocking

processes within the State, they used to claim that they belonged to some key decision-

making body to realize the desires of the neighbors, that they mastered bureaucratic

procedures perfectly, or that they personally knew the actors within the State so that the

results could be achieved. Thus, it was not uncommon for them, after listening the

request of the neighbor, and in front of him, to telephone the authority which in their

opinion could resolve the matter. When hanging up, the councilman indicated to the

neighbor which office he would have to go to, who to ask for, and point out there that he

19
or she “was sent by” the councilor, under the justification that this way he or she would

receive attention quickly and efficiently. With this maneuver, it was sought that the

neighbor saw for himself that the intermediary had the necessary social capital to make

bureaucratic processes go, and that access to the State was settled by virtue of

personalized political relations. Therefore, as a mechanism of power, these party figures

suggested the idea that the "State is me": I can solve the problem, I am the key to access,

I have the connections, I have the public solution to the need, I can provide goods and

services under the language of protection and care for the population.

On the other hand, in front of the neighbors they also showed contacts in the

private world and mobilized capital built in more intimate spheres (such as education or

the work environment), to point out that they were the most effective at solving problems.

Thus, for example, Councilman Jorge, of Renovación Nacional (RN) party, mentioned

that he had gotten work for numerous neighbors by virtue of his contacts in the business

world, or Councilman Oscar, of Unión Demócrata Independiente (UDI) party, mentioned

that, because he had worked in the Ministry of Housing and Urbanism (Ministerio de

Vivienda y Urbanismo) and studied law, he could guide neighbors especially on legal-

housing issues. In correspondence, the councilors were divided by the neighbors, rather

than by their political or ideological cleavages, by their "area of specialty": on which

subject they could solve problems more efficiently. This coincides with other research

that indicates that in Chilean local contexts tend to blur party or ideological flags as

criteria for the demarcation of political representatives (Arriagada, 2003; Barozet, 2004).

Ultimately, around reducing the contacts of the leaders with their political

competitors, the councilors made use of the claim (subtle or explicit) and the sanction

20
(withdrawing the circulation of goods and services), when they observed that the

neighborhood leaders with whom they interacted, especially in a more intense and stable

way over time, established contact with their political competitors (other councilors).

This denotes a certain vigilance over the activities of neighborhood leaders, especially by

the secretaries or assistants of the councilors, and that the other side of proximity is the

aspiration to control. Thus, they sought to become the "monopoly" in the delivery of

goods and services (Auyero,2001), under the assumption that they would thus be more

likely to secure loyalties and political support from their beneficiary population.

However, the leaders were skillful in circumventing these expectations, and there were

many cases in which they refused to reduce their sources of resources by arguing

autonomy, that is, that they were free to choose with which councilor or political

authority they could interact.

Images about the State from a socioanthropology of clientelism.

So far, we have pointed out that, in their daily interactions, the citizens in Avellaneda

invoke resources and skills to make themselves heard by the councilors and advance in

their demands: need and social merit, ties of closeness (social and physical), familiarity

and affections, conditioning of political support, and respect for the socio-state

hierarchies. The councilors, for their part, use some resources and skills in common to the

neighbors to legitimize themselves with the population, although it highlights that, due to

their state investiture and greater social, political, and economic capital, they present their

activities as defining to access the State or solve problems directly, and under this

expectation they seek to control the behavior of citizens.

21
The resources and skills presented here find parallels with other research on clientelism

from a socioanthropoligcal view and anthropology of social assistance in the region, such

as Brazil (Gay, 1994; Desmond, 2006; Heredia, 2016; Heredia and Palmeira, 2015),

Argentina (Auyero, 2001; Quirós, 2011; Ferraudi, 2014; Manzano, 2013; Perelmiter,

2018; Vommaro and Quirós, 2011; Wilkis, 2010), El Salvador (Montoya, 2015),

Colombia (Buchely, 2015; Jaramillo and Buchely, comps. 2019); Mexico (Saldívar,

2008; Hagene, 2015), or Uruguay (Álvarez, 2012), in the same way that reinforces what

has been said about Chile (Arriagada, 2013; Perez, 2020; Rojas, 2019, Valenzuela, 2016).

In addition, it finds similarities with studies in Europe (Dubois, 2020; Fassin, 2003;

Graham, 2002) and Asia (Yang, 2005). Thus, the ethnographic vignettes mentioned

above do not refer to an anecdotal or deviated aspect of the relations between citizenship

and the State but a structural feature of political culture not only Latin America that is

fruitful in studying the construction of images about the State and its effects on social

life.

A central concern of the anthropology of the State is to ask through what

processes the State regulates its populations, that is, what effects it has at the level of

identities, subjectivities, and forms of organization with state intervention (Agudo and

Estrada, ed. 2011; Jaramillo and Buchely, comps. 2019). We consider that the resources

and skills mobilized by citizens speak to how people seek to solve everyday problems,

especially the ways in which they publicly raise and legitimize their complaints. The need

and social merit, in addition, account for a more general process about the representations

and practices associated with social assistance by the State. As we saw in Avellaneda, the

exposition of social need invokes the images of a suffering being, that is, whose condition

22
of deprivation has effects on his psychology and therefore needs to be heard. The social

dimension of the State, according to several authors, takes as a basis the link with the

poor in which the places of listening for the "problematic" populations (criminals, poor,

drug addicts) multiply, based on the assumption that many of their problems have a moral

character, hence therapeutic intervention is essential to alleviate their suffering (Dubois,

2020; Fassin et al., 2015; Rojas, 2019). What happens in this way is the reproduction of

images associated with the "good" poor, that is, who genuinely suffers from the point of

view of the other (the intermediary or representative of the State) in a context of

individualization of treatments not so much to reduce poverty but the suffering of the

citizen.

In line with the above argument, social merit refers to a more general process of

transformation of social policies in which autonomy (understood as non-dependence on

the State) is associated with empowerment, co-responsibility, participation of civil

society and decentralization (Agudo, 2015; Vommaro, 2011). Chilean neoliberalism, of a

depth without comparison with the rest of the countries of Latin America, is expressed in

that the social actors, to be attended by the State, must "demonstrate" that they are doing

something for themselves to solve their problems, and seek to make the provision of

goods and services cheaper under the argument that this will give them more likely to be

assisted. As a structural effect, this helps to reproduce forms of social management that

prioritize the dere-responsibility of the State in matters of social welfare. Also, as we can

see, the State attendance is focused on attention to the emergency, not long-term policies.

From the previous notes it follows, in addition, the use of social need and merit by

the citizens express social atomization and competition, since access to the State is dealt

23
with in spaces where neighbors must compete based on the resources and skills they are

able to mobilize in their encounters with the "guardrails" of the provision of goods and

services, like the councilors. The literature on the links between neighborhood

organizations and the State in Chile confirms this conclusion (De la Maza, 2004;

Valdivia, Álvarez y Donoso, 2012; Pérez, 2020).

The display of closeness in its social and physical dimensions, as well as

familiarity, also deserve some concluding notes. We note that standard theories of politics

make "reason" and "interests" their main explanatory mechanisms, which would show

their limited ability to understand political ties in Avellaneda. Affections and proximity

as ways of legitimizing the exchange and denying the political uses of the relationship,

which is a matter of reflection within clientelism, is especially pronounced in Chile given

that neighborhood organizations are formally prohibited from carrying out activities of

"political proselytism" (support for any political-partisan actor or candidate within the

organization).16 In general, we thus have the paradoxical effect according to which the

affections, to have the desired result (to stabilize the reciprocal exchange), must be shown

as anti-instrumental, that is, they do not respond to a skillful manipulation of the situation

(Alexander, 2005). The performative dimension of the exchange thus becomes

fundamental and demands an emotional investment based on listening, protection, and

daily contact.

Along with the emotional work, agency and creativity of clients can be seen in

conditioning their political support and the day-to-day negotiations they make with

councilors when the latter seek to control them and limit their sources of resources. The

autonomy defended by clients, thus, is not defined in liberal terms (as non-intervention

24
of the State), but as the ability to negotiate the terms of their social relations with

political-partisan actors, participate in the political game, and decide with which

intermediary to interact. This autonomy, as other anthropologies of the State have

proposed, has as a correlate to create a moral bond with the State in order to establish

social capital (Shijman and Laé, 2010; Yang, 2005).

On the other hand, respect for socio-state hierarchies expresses a particularly

relevant way to explore the images produced by the State from social interactions and

how they blur the boundaries between the public and the private, as well as hierarchy

and horizontality: it is paradoxical how neighborhood leaders oscillate between this

respect, which would account for a certain distance and impersonality in the treatment,

with signs of familiarity and closeness to stabilize reciprocal exchange. The councilors,

for their part, show their distinctions and positions within the State and the political

system to argue "power of action" within these spheres, although under the slogan that

they are insufficient to be heard and attended to, and must mobilize capitals built in

more informal and intimate spheres (like the work and friendship), in which they forge

their contacts. In the same way, they make use of the socio-state hierarchies to demand

legitimacy from the citizens, but when they share food with the latter, they "take off their

coats” and, to bring the "power" of the State closer to the community, they invoke

affection and interknowledge. Therefore, derived from the multiplicity of the positions

occupied by the actors, there is a space for the ambiguity and double interpretations. In

short, there would be no absolute division between the private, associated with the moral,

the intimate and the personal, and the public, associated with universality and

25
impersonality in the relationship of the State with citizens. On the contrary, the

distinction is porous and oscillating.

The literature on political patronage has deepened the understanding of the point

of view of clients and political intermediaries, and has sub explored that of patrons. This

research shines on how the State, through its representatives, makes its population

readable to intervene on it (Scott, 1998), and in an ethnographic way the most invisible

and informal facet of the work of the councilors. By establishing counterpoints with the

points of view of citizens, it can be seen in a more complex way how the actors of

clientelism participate in controversies about the legitimacy and meaning of exchanges in

politics. As well as the clients are not dispossessed and have "weapons", in the way that

James Scott (1985) has proposed, the councilors do not have an absolute weight either,

but they are also prey to the expectations, needs and desires of the clients. Therefore, we

emphasize that their work fits well with the definition of "bureaucrats at street level"

(Lipsky,1980), firstly, because they distribute goods and services with a high

discretionary content, since they have a margin of maneuver to say to whom it is

delivered and to whom it is not, but where moral criteria come into play, such as

necessity and merit that they must "certify" in the citizenry. Secondly, because they must

keep a certain performativity about its work, such as the establishment of a close,

affective, and anti-elitist bond with the population, especially the most deprived

(Buchely, 2015; Perelmiter, 2018; Rojas, 2019).

Finally, as can be seen in this research, the State does not refer to an autonomous

entity, external or split from social reality, but built through the primary bond that

citizens experience with councilors. In this scenario, the State is constructed "opaque",

26
that is, unreadable, confused, uncertain, at the same time as "humanized", that is, it

distributes goods and services through personalized political relations. The anthropology

of the State has pointed out that the division of State/society is, more than a fact of social

reality, an effect of power (Mitchell, 1991). In line with this conclusion, for us the

division occurs, provisionally and contingently, when the councilors exhibit and mobilize

their social, political and economic capitals to make a difference between them (those

who know the best and fastest way to access the State), versus the others, the neighbors,

who "lack" these capitals. In the same way, when the neighbors and leaders raise the

strategy of dealing with problems individually and personalized that shows cooperation

and negotiation, instead of a collective and contestant way: the assisted, in front of the

asymmetries of power and capital that he or she perceives, together with the experience

of the "personalized political mediation" (Auyero, 2001; Arriagada, 2013), finds efficient

the one-to-one link, the search for the intermediary capable of providing a solution

(Nuijten, 2003).

Concluding remarks

The most studied form of articulation in the link between citizens and the State includes

legal and political inclusion components that emphasize civil, political, and social rights.

Here we have sought to problematize this assumption by outlining the moral and

emotional aspects in everyday political ties, also emphasizing the resources and skills that

representatives and citizens mobilize reciprocally. This exercise thus illuminates the

codes of practice that stand on the border between the formal and the informal, the public

and the private, hierarchy and horizontality.

27
The State, for the above reasons, from the ethnographic point of view becomes

fragmented, that is, located in multiple fluid and routinely negotiated support points. This

assumption would go against those views that see clientelism as a practice that is the

result of an "absent" State, that is, unable to enforce laws and regulations. As can be seen

in this research, the State is present as a situational practice and representation associated

with the care and protection of the population, especially the most vulnerable.

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1
In Chile, communes are the lowest administrative units, such as in Mexico or Colombia

municipalities, and are governed by a mayor and a number of councilors whose number depends on the

number of voters registered in that territory. More information in: Gobierno de Chile, Subsecretaría de

Desarrollo Regional y Administrativo. Manual de Gestión municipal 2008.

http://www.subdere.cl/documentacion/manual-de-gestion-municipal-actualizado-al-a%C3%B1o-2008-

0
2
Data in Chile on unemployment and poverty are collected from the Socioeconomic Characterization

Survey (Encuesta de Caracterización Socioeconómica, CASEN). The information presented

corresponds to the 2015 survey.

3
This Foundation defines slums as "settlements where eight or more families, living in clustered or

adjoining dwellings, are in an irregular land tenure situation and lack regular access to one or more

basic housing services (drinking water, electricity and sewerage/septic tank). More information at:

Actualización del Catastro Nacional de Campamentos 2018. Techo-Chile.

https://www.techo.org/chile/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2019/07/Informe-final-Actualizacion-

2018_.pdf
4
Neighborhood leaders will be understood like members who perform leadership tasks within formally

established social organizations (neighborhood boards -juntas de vecinos-, mother centers -centros de

madre-, senior clubs -clubes de adulto mayor-, sports clubs -clubes deportivos-) and link local needs

with State structures, especially at the municipal level. While the neighborhood boards have the

purpose of proposing and executing projects, managing the solution of problems of the neighborhood

complementing the work of the authorities, mother centers and senior clubs have a dynamic focused on

sociability and receive from the municipality courses of different kind (for example, baking, weaving,

crafting), or the visit of a specialist of the local health office to perform physical exercises, memory

stimulation, or basic medical check-ups. Sports clubs, finally, are spaces reserved for the promotion of

sport and its different disciplines, although most of the clubs we met are dedicated to football. The
organization and functioning of these organizations can be consulted in: “Ley 19, 418 sobre juntas de

vecinos y demás organizaciones comunitarias”. Latest version (01/04/14). Biblioteca del Congreso

Nacional de Chile. http://www.leychile.cl/Navegar?idNorma=70040

5
By professional politicians, we will understand representatives: mayor, councilors, and regional

councilors.
6
In Chile, neighborhood organizations finance their projects through competitive funds provided by the

State at the municipal, regional, or central level. The projects can range from the provision of musical

instruments, exercise machines, improvement of green areas, folkloric costumes, realization of

activities that can generate profits to overcome poverty such as carpentry or bakery. More information

at: https://www.fondos.gob.cl/
7
This is a contrast to the fact that, from a formal point of view, the powers of councilors are quite

limited, and are reduced to attend, three times a month, the sessions of "municipal council", the

instance in which together with the mayor they discuss and approve regulations relating to the

commune. For its formal powers, see: “Ley fácil. Guía legal sobre concejales”.

https://www.bcn.cl/leyfacil/recurso/concejales

8
The portrait of political parties in Chile is divided currently between options at the center-left, which

is composed mainly by the Democracy Christian -Democracia Cristiana- (DC), the Socialist Party-

Partido Socialista-(PC), and the Party for the Democracy -Partido por la Democracia- (PPD). The

spectrum of the right is dominated by the Union Democrat Independent -Unión Demócrata

Independiente- (UDI) and National Renewal -Renovación Nacional- (RN). To the left, Democratic

Revolution -Revolución Democrática- (RD), Autonomist Movement -Movimiento Autonomista-,

Equality Party -Partido Igualdad- (PI), and Humanist Party -Partido Humanista-(PH), lead.
9
Emergency housing in Chile, also known as "mediaguas", have a light construction, easily mountable

and transportable, and adaptable to different types of soil. They have a basic electrical installation and
may or may not include a bathroom.
10
In the municipal elections of 2016 in Avellaneda there were three candidates for mayor: the one of

the “Nueva Mayoría” (New Majority) (center-left), that of the “Alianza por Chile” (Alliance for Chile)

(right) and that of the “Movimiento Autonomista” (Autonomist Movement) (left).

11
El Mercurio and La Estrella are national newspaper and with regional editions.
12
We will take Jeffrey Alexander's definition of performance: "the process by which actors,

individually or together, exhibit for others the meaning of their social situation" (Alexander, 2005, p.

19), which involves bodily attitudes, gestures, tone of voice, and other resources to stage a situation as

believable.
13
Observing the closeness through the social and physical dimensions is obtained from the classic study

of the anthropologist Larissa Lomnitz (1987).

14
“La once” refers to the act of drinking tea or coffee with some complement (bread, cookies,

sandwiches), in the company of others. It is usually done in the afternoon-evening.

15
Just to account for some data on Chile, recent measurements of Latinobarómetro (2015) indicate that

76% of the Chilean population never and almost never talk about politics with friends and 65%

mention not feeling close to a political party. Those in the survey LAPOP (Latin American Public

Opinion Project, 2014) report that 98% never attend meetings of political movements or parties, and

88% do not sympathize with any party.

16
In the 17 years of military dictatorship (1973-1990), the military at the head of the State sought to

banish the 'political ideologies' of neighborhood organizations, prohibiting in them party ties or

political-programmatic discourses. In addition, atomize their demands by focusing them on the

municipality and give them a tone relative to everyday issues. This process has been described by

Valdivia, Álvarez and Donoso (2012). To know the intermediation of the demands towards the State

before the military coup, see Valenzuela (1977).