Shaping Shores: The Continuous Formation of Beaches on the Buenos Aires Coast (Argentina)

Abstract

This chapter explores the continuous formation of beaches on the Buenos Aires coast, examining them not as fixed natural entities but as dynamic socio-material configurations. Drawing from ethnographic research with street vendors and beachgoers, it introduces the concept of beach time to highlight the seasonal, political, and economic dimensions that shape these spaces. Beaches emerge through the interaction of human and nonhuman actors, ecological cycles, regulations, and imaginaries that extend beyond the shoreline. Far from static, they are contested sites where work, leisure, morality, and politics intersect. In Argentina, beaches act as indicators of economic trends, arenas of urban order, and stages of public debate. By situating beaches within local histories and global processes, this work rethinks them as generative spaces of coexistence, negotiation, and social imagination.