Kirjahaku

The Fear of Erring, a combination of thick ethnography and an ethnopoetic storyline, illustrates how mistrust, ignorance, and imagination govern the everyday work of personnel in Argentina's criminal justice system. The book shows that Argentina's justice system faces public suspicion and a tense atmosphere of competition and mutual mistrust among employees. It provides evidence of widespread fear among legal professionals of being deceived and making erroneous decisions based on manipulated information. Rational methods of generating knowledge often hit their limits, confronting employees with impenetrable ignorance. The detailed description of bureaucratic life demonstrates that legal professionals resort to imagination and speculation, yielding insights into their moral positioning. By focusing on these imaginaries, the book reveals unnoticed routines and functions of the justice system that shape legal processes, decision-making, and the institution's image. The book's discussion on mistrust, ignorance, and imagination extends beyond Argentina, addressing key questions about social cohesion, knowledge bases, and perspectives on the past and future in current social and global debates.

The apocryphal story of punk and hardcore is narrated as a history of young rebels united by shared interests, values and a sense of equality. Through the example of the scene of Buenos Aires, Ingo Rohrer demonstrates that this unity is fragile and requires different practices of maintenance to ensure the cohesive continuity of the community. Friendship is the focus of these efforts, but at the same time it is also a point of vulnerability where the group’s dissolution and disappointment about the scene germinates. Ingo Rohrer examines how a local scene’s quest for cohesion is concurrent with tensions and contradictions. Beyond the attention put on the friendship in the local scene, the author asks what role friendships play in the local life world of neighborhoods and in the globalized punk and hardcore scene. Based on rich empirical data, the author suggests new perspectives on group processes and local/transnational relations with relevance far beyond the realm of these vibrant music scenes.