Territorialized pandemic

Everyday life in two neighborhoods of Buenos Aires

Abstract

This article deals with the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of inhabitants of two neighborhoods in the City of Buenos Aires, Argentina. In this framework, it dwells on the changes, adaptations, and redefinitions that the pandemic context imposed on daily life at its interface with the territory. It pays special attention to the experience of preventive and compulsory social isolation and its impacts on neighborhood sociability. The analysis is based on the assumption that the pandemic, although global in nature, has effects and meanings with a local anchor, emphasizing its situated nature. Effects and meanings are read in articulation with the adaptation practices carried out by citizens. The methodological strategy on which the work is based is qualitative, 11 in-depth interviews were carried out with residents of the Lugano and San Telmo neighborhoods of the City of Buenos Aires, in the month of July 2021. The main findings have to do with the individual and collective adaptation strategies that are configured in the pandemic context to support daily life.