Relational riot: austerity and corruption protest in the neoliberal era

On December 16, 1993, thousands of public employees sacked and burned three government buildings (the Government House, the courthouse, and the legislature) and the private residences of nearly a dozen local politicians and officials in the Argentine city of Santiago del Estero. Drawing upon the recent ‘relational turn’ in the sociology of collective action, the article examines four different processes at the root of this contentious episode: a) escalation of protest; b) the learning of violence together with the collective definition of targets; c) brokerage efforts among protesting parties together with the emergence of new—previously passive or uncommitted—actors on the side of the protesting coalition; and d) the transformation of protesters' collective identity. An examination of these processes contributes to a better understanding of the outbreak, form, course, and meaning of the riot than one provided by collective behaviour, breakdown, and ‘disruption of the quotidian’ approaches.