Laura Valdemarca’s scientific contributions

This article is a case study of how the most important newspaper from the interior of Argentina treats the issue of domestic violence. It is based on a study of primary sources and supported, methodologically, by discourse analysis. The discursive analysis of images related to domestic violence rests on the understanding that the media constructs social representations from a news-worthy criteria. We emphasize the ways in which such a construction supports various widely-entrenched beliefs, making it difficult for readers to go beyond the victim-perpetrator dichotomy and become committed to resolving this social problem.

This article is a case study of how the most important newspaper from the interior of Argentina treats the issue of domestic violence. It is based on a study of primary sources and supported, methodologically, by discourse analysis. The discursive analysis of images related to domestic violence rests on the understanding that the media constructs social representations from a news-worthy criteria. We emphasize the ways in which such a construction supports various widely-entrenched beliefs, making it difficult for readers to go beyond the victim-perpetrator dichotomy and become committed to resolving this social problem.

During the Colonial Era, in the city of Córdoba, far from de Atlantic port of Buenos Aires a group of wholesale import merchants was formed. But when Argentina incorporated itself into the world market as a food producer between the 1880s and the 1920s those merchants suffered from the social and economic modernization of the country. Modernization was a process that altered circuits, the distribution of the population and other conditions in the domestic market. This article presents the varying ways in wich wholesale import merchants adapted themselves and resisted when they were threatened by the modernization process. When facing this threat this merchants designed new legal structures in order to protect themselves from the competition from the Atlantic port�s merchants, the railway and its taxes. In this way, they survived inside an economic model whose context and features were far different from those in which these merchants had strengthened their predominance as intermediaries. Durante la época colonial en la ciudad de Córdoba, alejada del puerto atlántico de Buenos Aires, se desarrolló un grupo de comerciantes mayoristas importadores. Cuando la Argentina se incorporó al mercado mundial como productora de alimentos de clima templado, entre 1880 y 1920, la modernización económica y social del país afectó negativamente a aquellos comerciantes. La modernización fue un proceso que alteró circuitos, la distribución de la población e impuso nuevas condiciones en el mercado interno. El artículo presenta las diversas maneras en que esos comerciantes mayoristas importadores se adaptaron y resistieron cuando la modernización los amenazó. Para enfrentar la amenaza los comerciantes diseñaron una nueva estructura legal que los protegiera de la competencia de comerciantes provenientes del puerto, del ferrocarril y de los costos de sus fletes. A partir de las modificaciones, estos comerciantes que habían basado su actividad en condiciones de mercado tan diferentes, lograron controlar, en alguna medida los efectos y condiciones de la modernización y asegurar su permanencia como intermediarios mercantiles.