Body-Territory, Masculinities and Rural Youth Vulnerability: Embodied Formative Experiences in a Community Organisation in Southern Córdoba, Argentina

Abstract

This article analyses how embodied masculine practices are produced and reconfigured among socially vulnerable young men participating in a rural community-based pedagogical organisation in southern Córdoba, Argentina. Drawing on a qualitative ethnographic approach developed between 2021 and 2023, it examines how sport, cooperative labour, and playful practices both render visible and potentially transform the heteronormative norms embedded in dominant masculine models. The findings show that football reinforces hierarchies grounded in bodily endurance and performance, while other practices—such as yoga and cooperative agricultural work—enable relational repertoires linked to care, solidarity, and affective expression. Vulnerability emerges not only as a material condition but also as an embodied and territorially mediated experience. The article proposes understanding masculinities as situated processes configured at the intersection of body, territory, vulnerability, and institutional mediation.