Date
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Update: Owed to Hurricane Nicole arriving to central Florida on 11/10, Yovanna's talk will be rescheduled to December 8 and will present together with Diana Montaño.
- Presenter: Yovanna Pineda, University of Central Florida, "The Techno-aesthetics of rural men, farm machine repair, and climate in modern Argentina"
- Discussant & Moderator: Diana J. Montano
- Summary: Rural men constructed different masculinities according to available physical, ecological, and social resources in the Argentine pampas region. During the twentieth century, the pampas was fertile land for crop farming, but was also prone to drought, excessive rains, and locust invasions. Different types of rural crises threatened men’s sense of masculinity as providers of the family farm, but it also offered opportunities to reshape and create new male identities. Farm communities developed an alternative narrative of rural spaces through the use, repair, and design of heavy farm machinery, in particular the combine harvester in the breadbasket region of Santa Fe province. Regardless of the task, men, engaged in manual labor on a farm or skilled in operating, designing or repairing machinery, were considered honorable men that could weather the adversities of the region’s challenging ecology. Drawing from archives, interviews, material culture, media studies, and ethnography, this proposed paper examines the intersection of ecology, repair, and masculine identity. The case study is from the communities in and near San Vicente, Santa Fe Province. It suggests that the town celebrated the harvester as a provider of family and became central to local male identity.
- Related topic of the paper - https://repair.uni.lu/blog/spaces-of-design-repair-in-twentieth-century-...