Abstract:

In our days we are witnesses of social and political conflicts in Latin America that are developed in a context of strong ideological controversies about how it is possible to make compatible the claims of the capitalist accumulation and the constitutional guarantees of democracies in the current world. Taking on the context of a renewed efficacy of neoliberal ideology in Latin America, in this paper we analyze the opposed meanings which provoke the question of the unequal access to the goods and services from part of the salaried and popular sectors in contemporary Argentina. In order to do that, we approach us to some current interventions in the national public sphere where the problem of consumption of the lower rungs of the society is the cause of a controversy which goes beyond the field of the economical discussion to offer opposing perspectives about social stratification and distributive justice. Our hypothesis states that a central dimension of these controversies can be clarified by means of the analysis of the structure of consumption as a social practice. That means, taking account of the conflict that can be derived between its different dimensions in capitalist democracies.

Keywords: