Discourse analysis and ideological critique of a social policy: the “Alimentar Card” (Argentina, 2020)

Abstract

The present article undertakes an analysis of a social policy in Argentina, executed since February 2020. Specifically, from the tradition of critical studies of ideology, we analyze the construction of “hunger” as a social problem, its actors and agencies, expressed in the written informative materials handed out to the beneficiaries of the “Alimentar Card” in the city of Córdoba. This debit card is destined to poor families, for the purchase of food. We study how discourse allows visualizing, as symptoms, the class bias and ideological truths consolidated around the eating of poor people in Capitalist Realism. For this, we approach the public event in which the Alimentar Card was distributed, and analyze specifically the informative materials given to assistants. The case identifies ideological principles of capitalism, central to questioning current democracies and policies, such as the ideas of shortage, infantilization of the poor and individual resolution of poverty though consumption.