Stature decline and recovery in a food-rich export economy: Argentina 1900-1934

Using height data for recruits of a principal regiment at Buenos Aires, the paper revises the question of welfare in Argentina during the period 1900-1934. The period of rapid export-led growth (1900-1913) showed an absolute deterioration of “net nutrition.” On the other hand, the inter-war period (1918-1939), generally characterized as a period of economic “delay” or “retardation,” presented a steady improvement in nutrition and health conditions. Two powerful external shocks, World War I and the Great Depression, had a minimal impact on the biological welfare of Argentine recruits. Economic growth generated important regional and social inequalities.     

Stature growth in industrializing Argentina: The Buenos Aires industrial belt 1916-1950

A sustained long-term increase in average stature accompanied the process of import-substituting industrialization in the main suburban area of Argentina, the Buenos Aires Conurbano. This gain in net nutrition was attained before the rise to power of a re-distributionist political party: the Peronists. The article also provides evidence of a decline in average heights during the period 1939-1945, which challenges us to revise the traditional wisdom about the impact of World War II and Peronist social policies and its implications for the nutrition and health of children. The new evidence on heights shows also persistent social and regional differences over time that had not been documented before.     

Taking Bourdieu to the Shantytown

This essay extends Bourdieu's work on habitat–habitus and symbolic domination to the study of urban marginality. A full account of urban relegation should pay systematic attention to the environmental hazards to which the dispossessed are routinely exposed. Social science accounts of how domination works at the urban margins should place poor people's experience of time (and, particularly, of waiting) at their front and center.