Abstract

RAMOS RODRIGUEZ, Rosa María  and  PENA SAINT MARTIN, Florencia. Nobody knows who he works for: Group pressure as a strategy to take advantage of the achievements resulting from projects promoted by public participation. Cuicuilco [online]. 2011, vol.18, n.52, pp.89-113. ISSN 0185-1659.

This paper has a double purpose: on the one hand, illustrating that mobbing (badly translated into Spanish as acoso laboral) is also present as a strategy used by different groups to obtain power in non-work contexts. For this reason, we propose referring to it as asedio grupal and immediately describing the space in which it takes place: the neighborhood. From an anthropological point of view, the paper aims to highlight the need to include the ethnography as part of the case study, along with direct observation, as valid methods to account for the specificities of this type of psychological abuse. This paper includes mobbing faced by a female citizen who participated in the development of a park in her community (as a member of the group responsible for the implementation of the project, winner of the "Program for the improvement of the Neighborhood", and member of the Citizens Committee). Once the project had been completed, the woman faced aggression, the main aggressor being a local leader for whom this woman represented a threat. The aggressor tried to gain, for himself and his group, the merit related to the creation of the park, together with the social and symbolic capital brought about by this local environmental improvement. The methodology used in the reconstruction of the case was qualitative: direct observation, participant observation, a log of the related events and profound interviews with the actors during important moments, along with other key characters.

Keywords : citizenship participation; mobbing; Program for Neighborhood Improvement.

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