Socialization, Poverty and Love: Contributions from the Sociology of the Body/Emotion

Abstract

This chapter aims to describe the central features of some conditions that enable the socialization of children and adolescents in Argentina as a possible example of them in the Global South, from the perspective of a sociology of the body/emotion. To achieve this goal, we propose the following argumentative strategy: (1) first, we will present a general approach to a sociology of bodies/emotions that allows us to access the phenom- enon of socialization in an “oblique” way; (2) we will present general data related to the transformation of the educational institution as processes associated to the conditions of possibility/obstacle to the connection education-socialization; (3) we present and analyze data on the status of child poverty in order to render some central features of the processes that condition the possibilities from which children and adolescents “become part” of society; (4) the same is done regarding the nutritional deficit in Argentina; (5) to conclude, the re-constructed scenario is completed by identifying and describing interstitial forms from which maternal “love” is constituted as a platform for the possibility of certain axes of socialization in spaces of socio-segregation and expropriation. a renewed interest in relation to life and affect across the social sciences and humanities. The paradigms of both life and affect break down the distinction between humans and other life forms, as we find in various forms of vitalism (Bergson, Deleuze, Massumi) and echoe in debates across the biological and ‘environmental’ sciences (Varela, Oyama, Lewontin, Margulis, Rose). This is a new post- humanism that examines our communality with other forms of creaturely life and companion species (Haraway), and the need for a non-anthropocentric ethics (Derrida). The focus upon life recognizes the governance and regulation of bodies (bio-politics), as well as investments across diverse practices (me-dia, consumer, biotechnological) in both the materiality and immateriality of bodies as biocapital and bio-media (code, information).” [12]