Scielo RSS http://socialsciences.scielo.org/rss.php?pid=0327-771220080001&lang=es vol. 4 num. SE lang. es http://socialsciences.scielo.org/img/en/fbpelogp.gif http://socialsciences.scielo.org http://socialsciences.scielo.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0327-77122008000100001&lng=es&nrm=iso&tlng=es From the analysis of a popular Argentinean idiom, this article develops the ways in which a country's inhabitants boycott their homeland through actions of sacrificial desecration. Argentina will soon commemorate the Bicentennial of its independence, and the country owes itself an examination of its history and of its self-condemning forms of language. http://socialsciences.scielo.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0327-77122008000100002&lng=es&nrm=iso&tlng=es This article explores two hundred years of Argentinean economic and political history, seeking for the causes that might explain why a potentially prosperous country, seen as such thanks to its natural and human resources, has been unable to defeat undervelopment and guarantee its population an acceptable standard of living. An attempt at understanding the evolution of this unusual, "would-be"country includes an analysis of the Spanish colonial legacy, the concentration of rural property, profeteering and speculative practices, the State's poor management, and neoliberal deindustrialization policies. http://socialsciences.scielo.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0327-77122008000100003&lng=es&nrm=iso&tlng=es This article systematizes a number of sociological explanations accounting for two hundred years of Argentinean institutional history. The analysis focuses on the difficulties to build up a democratic, stable, political order, which is why the key factors chosen only brush on individual protagonists. However, it is clear from the text that the period was characterized by the recurrent rise of personalist leaders who produced and were the product of the weaknesses shown by institutional structures. Alternation between periods of social mobilization and thwarting authoritarian reactions was another significant component of a political culture that seems to have begun to crack over the past two decades. http://socialsciences.scielo.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0327-77122008000100004&lng=es&nrm=iso&tlng=es This article systematizes a number of sociological explanations accounting for two hundred years of Argentinean institutional history. The analysis focuses on the difficulties to build up a democratic, stable, political order, which is why the key factors chosen only brush on individual protagonists. However, it is clear from the text that the period was characterized by the recurrent rise of personalist leaders who produced and were the product of the weaknesses shown by institutional structures. Alternation between periods of social mobilization and thwarting authoritarian reactions was another significant component of a political culture that seems to have begun to crack over the past two decades. http://socialsciences.scielo.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0327-77122008000100005&lng=es&nrm=iso&tlng=es This article systematizes a number of sociological explanations accounting for two hundred years of Argentinean institutional history. The analysis focuses on the difficulties to build up a democratic, stable, political order, which is why the key factors chosen only brush on individual protagonists. However, it is clear from the text that the period was characterized by the recurrent rise of personalist leaders who produced and were the product of the weaknesses shown by institutional structures. Alternation between periods of social mobilization and thwarting authoritarian reactions was another significant component of a political culture that seems to have begun to crack over the past two decades.