Locations of Hegemony: The Making of Places in the Toba's Struggle for La Comuna, 1989-99

In this article, I examine how hegemonic fields and the forms of contention they generate are active forces in the production of places. I focus my analysis on an indigenousgroupof the Argentinean Chaco, theTobaof the Pilcomayo River, and their recent struggles to gain control over the municipality of the region, locally known as la comuna. I examine how these struggles reproduce and simultaneously contest forms of state hegemony and, in so doing, define the contours of la comuna in tension with another place: the surrounding bush where the Toba focus their hunting and gathering practices. Because of the hegemonic values that inform these struggles, I argue that in this process the bush is being reconfigured in a contradictory way: on the one hand, as a locality gradually undermined by the influence of productivist discourses and, on the other hand, as a place of autonomy from "the government" This tense spatial configuration, in turn, informs Toba political discourses and practices. A central point of this article is that hegemony has spatial dimensions that are crucial in the unfolding of processes of ideological domination, accommodation, and resistance. {Key words: hegemony, place, ethnic politics, Argentina. Gran Chaco, Toba]