‘¿You don´t say hello anymore because you are in debt?’ Neighbors, morality and politics in Cooperative Las Cuatro Banderas (Córdoba city)

Abstract

The moral regime that manage and regulate the life of the individuals have been subject of analysis of Anthropology, as well as the diverse conflicts, antagonisms, and negotiations that these normative systems provoke in certain social groups. Therefore, the need to investigate the social processes that grant ethical content to certain concepts and practices requires of a study that, from an ethnographical approach, would explain how some specific judgments are made and challenged in each single context. This article exposes the different ways in which the neighbors of the Cooperative “Las Cuatro Banderas” are categorized by the members of the executive committee, according to the payment (or nonpayment) of the land, and the consequences carried to other dimensions of their social life as a result of such categories. At the same time, the speeches and practices of those who preside the committee, are also addressed by those outside the entity, who judge the forms - individual or collective - of doing politics. Understanding this will allow us to see how these moral distinctions are set in motion within a liminality process when facing the possible dissolution of the cooperative, once finished the individual public deed of the land within a social housing state program.