"What else do they want us to do?": cultural practices located in a small town

Abstract

The article analyzes processes related to cultural production in Chacabuco, a small, non-metropolitan and peripheral city in the northwest of the province of Buenos Aires (Argentina). Part of an ethnography carried out in the public conversation "Urban Scale and Cultural Management: challenges and strategies", organized for the communication of results obtained in an investigation on the cultural sector of Chacabuco between the years 2020-2023 and aimed at the entire community. Based on the record of this experience, from its design, production and realization, the work reflects on three issues related to cultural management oriented to the small city: 1) the production of institutional and personal presences based on notions of closeness/ distance; 2) the definition of roles and strategies among those who make up the local cultural sector; 3) the specificity of cultural management in the small urban area. In the description of this staging, representations and tensions are recorded that account for the complex relationships that derive from a reflection on cultural management from the urban scale