Tecnología y ansiedad de modernidad: notas etnográficas sobre el conflicto de Uber en Buenos Aires

Abstract

Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this article extends the notion of “anxiety for modernity”, developed in anthropological studies of Argentina, to an examination of the conflict surrounding Uber’s arrival to Buenos Aires. I argue that beyond labour debates over its empowering or exploitative nature, we must understand that for a segment of the city’s residents, Uber’s platform offered and symbolised a path of teleological progress, superior to a political imagined through inherent and historical vice and lack and epitomised then in the taxi industry. Beyond a cultural idiosyncrasy, I suggest this anxiety for modernity even impacted the kinds of discussions that could be had, from economic debates to the nature of public policy.