Social policies and sensitivities management: An approach from the sociology of the body/emotions

Abstract

The aim of the present paper is to show the building process of a policy of emotions in and through the social policies implemented in Argentina as of 1976. In order to achieve this aim we have resorted to qualitative secondary data reusing testimonies and a set of interviews that we were granted by women in 2010 trying to trace, in both cases, the feeling practices involved in being “beneficiaries” of some social policy. The argumentative strategy that we have chosen is the following: a) specification of the central themes of the theoretical and methodological approach used; b) reconstruction of the testimonies of women from 1976 and until the 2000 decade; c) presentation of the continuity processes of feeling practices in 2010; d) ending by maintaining the centrality that social policies have acquired in the development of sensitivities. The conclusion tries to show how the development of sensitivities through social policies plays a central role in the part these policies have in the processes through which the State occludes conflict and provides warranties for systemic reproduction.