ABSTRACT
The Argentina case opens up questions regarding a number of political and theoretical commonplaces on the effects of neoliberalism as well as certain mechanistic views of globalization. On the conceptual plane, but with strong political implications, one often hears that states and nations are disappearing; that globalization is making territorial questions and sovereignty claims irrelevant; that the foregoing inevitably affects economic policy and the job market; that national frontiers and identities are being erased; and that the above is an unavoidable process that, in the end, will benefit the vast majority of people, who in the meantime must learn new ways to exercise their civil rights and refrain from anachronistic forms of protest like street demonstrations. In Argentina each of the above points has proved to be only partially true. The error is to treat these partial truths as if they were transcendental, absolute ones, applying them indiscriminately and turning specific, contingent roads to development into the only way for a country and its people to progress.
