Based on ethnographic reanalysis and on current qualitative research on poor people's politics, this article argues that routine patronage politics and nonroutine collective action should be examined not as opposite and conflicting political phenomena but as dynamic processes that often establish recursive relationships. Through a series of case studies conducted in contemporary Argentina, this article examines four instances in which patronage and collective action intersect and interact: network breakdown, patron's certification, clandestine support, and reaction to threat. These four scenarios demonstrate that more than two opposing spheres of action or two different forms of sociability, patronage, and contentious politics can be mutually imbricated. Either when it malfunctions or when it thrives, clientelism may lie at the root of collective action.

Since the mid‐1990s, the economy and politics of Argentina have been closely intertwined with the expansion of agro‐exports—a process initiated with neoliberalization and continued under “post‐neoliberal” governments. The administrations of Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner are among the left‐of‐centre, neo‐developmental governments that were elected to power in Latin America in recent decades. This paper engages Gramsci's concepts of passive revolution and hegemony to analyse the political economy of the agrarian boom in Argentina, focusing on the frictions and contradictions of this national‐popular project. I inspect the political economy of the agro‐export boom, scrutinizing the political alliances and conflicts of the Kirchner governments, and the dilemmas that they have created for peasant movements. Between 2003 and 2015, peasant organizations supported the Kirchners as they discursively confronted Argentine agribusiness. Yet the neo‐developmental approach of their administrations did little to address the socio‐environmental impacts of the agro‐export boom and the glaring material inequalities of rural Argentina, and instead supported authoritarian governors and favoured global agribusiness corporations.

Drawing on fieldwork developed between 2003 and 2011, this article examines the expansion of genetically modified (GM) crops in Argentina and its consequences, namely, cases of pesticide drifts affecting rural communities. I compare cases in which peasants in northern Argentina protested against pesticide drifts (in 2003) to cases in which they did not react contentiously when facing environmental contamination (2009). I analyze these cases to address three issues that have not received enough attention in the scholarship on GM crops: First, the articulation of multiple scales, ranging from global to local; second, the variation within subordinate actors and their responses, oscillating between resistance and adaptation; and third, the environmental problems brought about by agricultural biotechnology, specifically the use of agrochemicals and its negative consequences. An ethnographic approach to GM crops can shed light on how the global project of agricultural biotechnology looks like when seen “from the ground.”

Why might social movements be highly contentious at one point in time and demobilize shortly after? Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this article examines the dynamics of demobilization of popular movements in a context of patronage politics. I argue that demobilization in these contexts results from relational processes creating a "dual pressure" stemming "from below" and "from above." In social environments where patronage is pervasive, poor people develop survival strategies relying on clientelistic arrangements. They participate in a social movement organization (SMO) to voice their rights, but also to address pressing survival needs by gaining access to resources. These expectations of constituents create a pressure "from below" on leaders of an SMO, which respond by securing resources obtained through alliances with national political actors. In turn, these alliances create a pressure "from above," because local leaders reciprocate this national support by eschewing the organization of collective actions. Drawing on data culled from 12 months of fieldwork on an Argentine peasant movement, this article inspects the interconnections between popular movements and patronage politics to refine our understanding of demobilization processes; contribute to discussions regarding the role of culture on contentious politics; and shed light on current demobilization trends in Latin America.

Since the 2000s, both the production of genetically modified (GM) soybeans and the cases of agrochemical exposure have grown exponentially in Argentina. Drawing on ethnographic research, I analyze how peasant social movements understand the socioenvironmental problems caused by the expansion of GM soybeans. I argue that at national, provincial, and local scales, the institutional recognition of peasant social movements and the performative actions of authorities discourage contentious collective action through subtle yet powerful mechanisms. The article contributes to social movement research and to the literature on peasant resistance by analyzing the cultural dynamics that constrain contention and shape processes of peasant collaboration, which are arguably as important as peasant resistance, although much less studied.