Cyborg political machines: Political brokering and modern political campaigning in Colombia
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hau7.2.027.pdf
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267.06 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
205319ca72db30b6ca6480b89e964356
Author(s)
Vidart-Delgado, Maria L.
Date Issued
September 2017
Journal
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Citation
Vidart-Delgado, Maria L. "Cyborg political machines: Political brokering and modern political campaigning in Colombia." HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 7, 2 (September 2017): 255-277 © 2017 The Author
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Colombian professional political consultants couple information technologies and local political brokering to circumvent strict voter privacy regulations that limit campaigns’ access to voters’ personal data. I argue that political consultants use information technologies to bolster traditional vertical, personality-centered political organizations, and to produce tightly controlled “cyborg political machines.” I challenge widespread notions that oppose media-based politics to traditional face-to-face politics (known also as clientelism). Instead, I show that although political elites introduced American political marketing methods hoping to modernize campaigns, the American way provided a new framework to preserve traditional authoritarian political arrangements after the extensive democratic reforms of the early 1990s.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Anthropology Program
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.14318/hau7.2.027
