Développement capitaliste et structures sociales des régions en Argentine (1880-1930)

Résumé En

Capitalist Development and Social Structure in Argentina, 1880-1930. H. F. Castillo and J. S. Tulchin. The essay deals with the agrarian structures that developed in Argentina at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th in response to the rising demand for foodstuffs in Europe and the demographic pressures there. The focus is on the dynamic process of expansion, paying particular attention to the dialectical relation between internal processes and external ones during the period of expansion, with the objective of describing how one mode of production comes to dominate others within a given social formation and what are its specific mechanisms of domination. The authors argue that credit was the central mechanism through which a fraction of the dominant class, in alliance with international capital, exerted its dominance and contributed to shaping the social and productive structures of the nation. The authors establish that there was significant interregional variation in the ecological characteristics and structural conditions across Argentina. Using data drawn form the Third National Census (1914), they define a set of variables reflecting productive structures from region to region. Then, drawing on data from the Archives of the Banco de la Nacion, they demonstrate how credit flows, from 1910 to 1930, varied from region to region according to the productive structures and the linkages to the international market which reflected the hierarchy of dominance within the society and the vulnerability of different productive groups to external pressures.