Contrary to popular wisdom, diplomacy can be a site of much weirdness. Although weirdness is often just the result of a faux pas, at other times it is produced performatively, with the objective of disrupting existing hierarchies, or initiating a broader recasting of order and international politics. The aim of this project is to scrutinize such instances when diplomacy goes awry and deviates from established practices and ask, among others: What effects strange and deviant practices have? Where does strangeness originate, in the actors, or in the environment?

This research addresses the work conditions in the Argentine garment industry and the forms of trade union organisation within the Unión de Trabajadores de la Economía Popular (UTEP, Popular Economy Workers Union). Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and political collaboration with this union, it engages with recent anthropological works on capitalism, labour, and value that have set the grounds to rethink the economy ‘otherwise’ combining contributions from political economy and feminism.