ABSTRACT
This article focuses on the study of some social control technologies and discourses, displayed in Argentina's provinces between 1880 and 1940, with particular reference to the so-called 'Territorios Nacionales' of La Pampa Río Negro and Neuquén, which were submitted to a direct federal authority. THe main purpose is to analyze - within these areas- - the building of repressive and sanitary institutions (i.e., police, prisons, asylums, hospitals) as well as the enforcement of positivists studying and classifying methodologies, intended to identify 'abnormality'. A straight and permanent rule of these "territorios Nacionales' on the federal State could have meant a longer attention to their social and economic development through a direct and intense presence of national, modernizing, positivist institutions. However, a deeper historical study of repressive and sanitary institutions allows to arrive to completely different conclusions. The sources show that these institutions had numerous daily problems, were frequently and severely under-budgeted and were obliged to develop not originally forseen functions and tasks. These situations imply revising not only these institutions' real regulation capacities but also the very existence of a generalized, efficient social control programme in Argentina at the beginning of the 20th century, as many scholars focused on Buenos Aires's study case have already argued.
