Post-authoritarian state formation in Argentina: Transitional justice as the accumulation of symbolic power

Abstract

Looking at the transitions to democracy in Latin America during the late 20th century, a number of scholars observed that human rights and transitional justice had become the central legitimizing axis of the new, post-authoritarian order. But the question of how human rights and transitional justice measures became such powerful sources of legitimacy in the first place was left unexplored. In this article I use Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic capital along with Mara Loveman’s explanation of the accumulation of this capital to explain how transitional justice came to function as a form of post-authoritarian state formation in Argentina.