In the capital of the country of cows. Material and symbolic displacements of animal life in Buenos Aires at the turn of the Century (1871-1910)

Desplazamientos materiales y simbólicos de la vida animal en la Buenos Aires de entresiglos (1871-1910)

Abstract

Abstract: The article aims to analyze the network of material processes, representations and symbolic uses that, between 1871 and the Centennial of the May Revolution, accompanied from Buenos Aires the consecration of the cow as what Nicole Shukin calls “animal capital”. In this context, oscillating between complementarity and tension, the historical vicissitudes that increased the value of bovine cattle as economic capital and the texts and images of the Buenos Aires culture that used the symbolic capital sedimented in the figure of the cow, icon or allegory of the national, were intercepted against a shared backdrop: the material and cultural transformations that, driven by hygienic criteria or advances in industrial techniques, mobilized a slow retreat of the animal presence in the space and the daily praxis of the city.