In 2001 Argentina experienced a massive economic crisis: businesses went bankrupt, unemployment spiked, and nearly half the population fell below the poverty line. In the midst of the crisis, the iconic twenty-story Hotel Bauen quietly closed its doors. Rather than leaving it vacant, a group of former employees occupied the property and restarted it as a worker cooperative. Drawing on years of ethnographic fieldwork, this talk explores the organizational transformation of the Hotel Bauen into the people’s hotel to theorize the organizational production of equality and consider the radical potential of work organizations today.

This event is co-sponsored by: Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, Department of Sociology, and Latin American and Caribbean Studies Institute.