New Directions in the History of Peronism

Abstract

When scholars who work on Peronism reveal their area of expertise to non-
Argentinean colleagues, reactions tend to fall along two lines. Most respond eagerly with their favorite anecdotes about Juan and Evita. But some have a perception that research on Peronism has been exhausted or that the subject is passé – or as one colleague put it, with a suitably outmoded expression, “Isn’t Peronism old hat?” The reality is that the field of “Peronism studies” shows few
signs of stagnation. Indeed, the quantity of publications on Peronism appearing each year is daunting, to say nothing about the high quality of many works. Although researchers are scattered across the globe and represent a range of disciplines, the bulk of this scholarship is produced in Argentina, which explains, regrettably, its partial invisibility to academics elsewhere. For non-specialists perhaps most surprising is that the majority of new works are not studies of
organized labor. This is not to say that labor is “dead”: far from it, as excellent labor studies continue to be produced and to ignore working women and men in the study of Peronism would be foolish. Yet the problems of state-labor rela- tions that once defined the field have given way to broader research agendas
and methodological experimentation.