Comprehend the cultural policy from its daily operation. Analysis of the cultural “usina” (powerplant) of the criminal unit nº 4 Santiago Vázquez (ex Comcar)

Abstract

The objective of this article is to describe and analyze the functioning of a cultural State policy program, the Cultural Usina of the criminal Unit Nº 4 Santiago Vázquez, ex Comcar, through the practices and representations of the officials working in the physical space where it develops and the experiences of some people who have participated in it. Starting from previous works that reflect on politics as a process, we propose to understand the senses attributed to this cultural policy programme as a mediation or reworking of the meanings proposed by the authorities that conceived it, where new meanings are negotiated and produced. Methodological design combined interviews with technicians and detainees who attended the Usina and participants observation in activities and in the educational community of Comcar.

Methodological design combined in-depth interviews with technicians and detainees who attended the Usina and participant observation in their activities as well as in the educational community of Comcar.

We conclude that the confinement context is fundamental to understand the tensions of the daily work and the production of meaning of the participants. In policies there are not only executors and beneficiaries but subjects with agency that participate in social environments that condition them. Their appropriations of the space opens by policy, shaped in and by the characteristics of the social life in which they are involved (the confinement, in our case) are the policy embodied, and constitute a fundamental object of research to understand its functioning and possible contributions.