Lost in the Long Transition: Struggles for Social Justice in Neoliberal Chile
Book
Overview
Overview
Abstract
In Lost in the Long Transition a group of scholars who conducted fieldwork research in post-dictatorship Chile during the transition to democracy critically examine the effects of the country’s adherence to neoliberal economic development and social policies. Shifting government responsibility for social services and public resources to the private sector, reducing restrictions on foreign investment, and promoting free trade and export production, neoliberalism began during the Pinochet dictatorship and was adopted across Latin America in the 1980s. With the return of civilian government, struggles for justice and equity worked alongside a pact of compromise and an economic model that brought prosperity for some, entrenched poverty for others and social consequences for all. Recent moderate governments in Chile attempt to balance "social and fiscal responsibilities" while still relying upon market mechanisms to provide for the common good. The “authoritarian enclaves” in the Chilean constitution have finally been removed, but there is still work to be done to right the wrongs of economic and social injustice. The authors come from the disciplines of cultural anthropology, history, political science, and geography, with research specializations in medical anthropology, economic anthropology, political ecology, peasant studies, gender and social identity, cultural studies and critical theory, labor history, social mobilization and new social movements, and environmental history. Specific issues addressed include: privatization of water rights in arid lands, tuberculosis and the public health crisis, labor strikes and the changing role of unions, the environmental and cultural impacts of export development initiatives on small-scale fishing communities, natural resource conservation in the private sector, the political ecology of copper, struggles for affordable housing, homelessness and citizenship rights under the judicial system, and the experiences of returned exiles. With the global financial meltdown of 2008, economies everywhere are in free market freefall as a result of de-regulation, government indifference or ineffectiveness, and corporate greed. In the years leading up to this crisis, many Latin American governments, responding to inequities at home and attempting to pull themselves out of dependency, moved away from the Chilean model. This book examines the social costs of that model and the growing resistance to neoliberalism in Chile, providing ethnographic details of the experiences of those excluded from its benefits. This research offers a look at the lives of those whose stories may have otherwise been "Lost in the Long Transition."
