The COVID-19 may have no nationality, but its impacts are locally experienced. Still today, the sense of urgency reaches us through mass media and social networks when we hear new worldwide updates about contagion and regarding research advances into finding a vaccine to counteract the virus. In this context, the house and the body gained relevance as they became vital for understanding the impact of this pandemic and with it, all its material and symbolic effects. In Argentina, this is unevenly experienced and lived. On March 20th, preventive, social and obligatory isolation, established by the national government.
At the beginning of the quarantine, the #MeQuedoEnCasa (#StayAtHome) motto was the main strategy to raise awareness of the importance of non-circulation to prevent the spread of the virus. This slogan stressed the need to stay at home and reduce outings only for the essential and indispensable goods or actions. For those who live in the more affluent social sectors and reside in large houses or the so-called lofts in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires (the richest district in the country) the isolation is lived differently as that in the half-built houses on the banks of the Reconquista River (an area greatly affected by pollution and flooding). Nor can we homogenize these experiences of living on farms in a rural town in La Pampa (a province next to Buenos Aires) to the pastoral homes of a small town in the high plateau of Jujuy (a province in the north part of Argentina at the border with Bolivia). Life occurs in various contexts according to the environment, production, and socio-cultural patterns.
Even in a context of quarantine, of overlapping times, of production of new routines and exacerbated demands, we were forced to continue with the performance: to give the best of us. Our interlocutors quickly warned the productivity command. In relation to the runners, to be active and deal with some fears of “losing physical condition” or getting fat as an “undesirable effect” of quarantine. In relation to middle-class families and their houses (in the western part of the Buenos Aires metropolitan area), this translated in maintaining their homes, setting up new environments, to seek strategies for the juxtaposition of tasks while nurturing their kids.
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Why do many of us spend a lot of our quarantine time exercising? How can we balance pleasure and relaxation with the productive command? For those who have an organized routine, confinement was a free adaptation to their lives in continuous movement. Among the runners and fitness people, being active is a part of their identities. Many sports companies developed different strategies not to lose their clients and still motivate them through social media to adapt their routines to this new pandemic normality. How do they overcome this #StayActive (boost by Adidas) and well-known #Fit challenges in these contexts?
In Buenos Aires, the general state of emergency updates a radical change for runners: it takes them off the streets and recruits them into their living-rooms, making them strictly compliant with the mandate (Nike’s motto) that says: No matter how Just Do It. This translated into a re-accommodation of spaces and schedules. One of the most important groups and event planner in Argentina encouraged local challenges by the slogan #MoveteEnCasa (Move at home). Those who reaffirmed their identity through exposure to risk become the celebrities of the news during this stage: amateur athletes –without limits– who complete 42 kilometres on seven m² balconies, cyclists who break quarantine and are filmed pedalling in the mountains, influencers who finish triathlons in their backyards to encourage the awareness of staying at home. “If there is a will, you can do it”, points out the epigraph of a photo from Rodrigo on Instagram after completing a 10K race from his bedroom to his living room. For them, quarantine can paralyze the economy, meetings, hugs, but it should never stop our bodies: to overcome adversity is to overcome yourself.
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Apart from exercising our bodies through various platforms, another way to stay active is doing things around the house to be productive by decorating, fixing or just maintaining it. In middle classes to do home office and get paid, to spend some time with the family, to be able to organize a wardrobe is a privilege that others do not have. Parents –mostly female– occupy full-time roles as teachers, entertainers, and cooks, among many other occupations. The passage from presentiality to virtuality in many activities led to various frustrations and, paradoxically, to reconnecting with their children, sometimes at an exceedingly high price.
For Rosa, the pandemic destroyed her business of selling beauty and hair care products. She used to sell products to the gym mates, and now her entrepreneurship was ended by the isolation. Although she tried to go through this “as best as possible” her living conditions profoundly deteriorated. Gloria, a married housewife with three children, made staying at home “a positive thing”: she took the opportunity to order clothes and arrange those things she had never been able to do with her husband, Ariel. As we can see, privilege has many faces, including success and failure stories. However, both Rosa and Gloria are compelled by a narrative to adapt themselves.[i]
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In Argentina, there are a variety of experiences related to isolation. While in some provinces of the country: restrictive measures are beginning to be lifted, people are circulating, and commercial activities are expanding, in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires we are being on confinement for more than 100 days. However, the question remains: how we reorganized ourselves under contingency?
The Instagram lives, the YouTube tutorials or the parodies in TikTok place us in front of supposed democratization of the contents. People share experiences on how to “set the mood” to workout in that house that we have turned into a Multipurpose Room. Advice guides for “taking care of yourself”, self-make-up, caloric regulations, fitfluencers, cooking influences sponsored by quasi-nutritionists mixed up with buildfluencers that also contribute to this productive idea. When this is all over, what will remain and what will perish?[ii]
While some can stay safe at home, others give their lives: health and service employees and security forces seem to be always awake helping people. Others have no choice, and if they want to live, they must face the virus in the streets. The others, the most invisible: the workers in the popular economy, the women who take care of children and elderly at home, the garbage collectors are still at the backstage of this scenery. In this brief note, we show some vignettes in connection with the experiences in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires related to the body, the practice of running and the daily life that people strive to sustain in their homes. However, these are just two sides of a multi-layered confinement experience.
[i] https://www.labcambio.unifi.it/upload/sub/AcceptedSubmission/cambio_openlab_13.pdf
[ii] https://allegralaboratory.net/privilege-and-certainty-middle-classes-and-confinement/
María Florencia Blanco Esmoris (Institutional filiation CIS-CONICET/IDES) has a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from the Institute for High Social Studies (IDAES) of the National University of San Martin (UNSAM). She is a PhD candidate in Social Anthropology (IDAES-UNSAM) now and is also serving as an Assistant Professor.
Nemesia Hijós (Institutional filiation IIGG-UBA/CONICET) has a Bachelor’s degree in Social Anthropology (UBA) and a Master’s degree in Anthropology at the Institute of Economic and Social Development (IDES) – Institute for High Social Studies (IDAES) of the National University of San Martin (UNSAM). She is currently pursuing a PhD in Social Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) where she also serves as an Assistant Professor.
Location: BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA