Antoine
Faure, Franck Gaudichaud, María Cosette Godoy,
Fabiola
Miranda & René Jara, editors (2016)
Chili
actuel: gouverner et résister dans une société néolibérale
Paris:
L’Harmattan, 300 p.
Reviewed by Héctor Ríos-Jara
University
of Bristol
Mature
Neoliberalism and Social Movement in Chile: reflections for a contemporary research
agenda
The rise of
the anti-austerity movements in Europe and the long-term antineoliberal conflicts
in Latin-America have renewed interest in the political economy of social
movements. As Donatella Della Porta (2015) has claimed, neoliberalism and
political economy are back in social movement studies. The book Actual Chile:
Governing and Resisting in a Neoliberal Society is a significant
contribution to this trend. Through a compilation of 13 articles, presented
during an international colloquium at Grenoble in 2013,
the book offers a diverse and rich panoramic of cases and approaches to study
the dynamic social conflict in Chile. The book stands out for two reasons.
First, the compilation offers a panoramic view of the current dynamic of social
conflicts, acting as a map of contentious activity in contemporary Chile.
Secondly, the book proposes basic elements for a new research agenda in social
movement’s studies, acting as a draft for a new research agenda on social conflict
and neoliberalism in Chile.
Mapping
the Chilean conflict
In its
modality of map, the compilation of articles produces a panoramic view of the current
state of social conflicts and their relationships with different expressions of
neoliberalism. The map covers eight conflicts, including emblematic ones such as
students’, indigenous’, women’s, and workers’, and other emergent conflicts
like the housing movement, environmental struggles, and transformations in
political parties. The main particularity of this map is to offer a reading of
the sectorial fissures and spaces of contention of neoliberal hegemony, based
on the analysis of the relationships of codetermination between neoliberalism
and collective agency in Chile.
The
alternation between sectorial conflicts and panoramic views embraced in the book
produces a well-balanced map that combines local analysis with global readings
of social conflict. The majority of the articles include an inductive and ideographic
approach to neoliberalism. They highlight how neoliberalism is reproduced,
expanded or contested, from the perspective of structures and institutions,
subjectivities and agents, and power apparatuses and mechanisms. This collage
of local conflicts is well synthesized in the concluding chapter and epilogue, which
give a panoramic reflection of the compilation and a critical analysis of the historical
trajectories of collective action under the neoliberal order. Consequently, the
book successfully introduces the reader to a strategic perspective of the multiple
spheres of contention of Chilean neoliberalism, acting as a strategic map of conflicts
and struggles.
Towards
a new research agenda
In its
modality of research agenda, the book confronts the dilemmas of suggesting a
distinctive research field and an emergent epistemological object. From the
perspective of the research field, the book is focused on the last two decades
of Chilean history. This historical delimitation expands the research field
beyond the study of the first waves of neoliberal reforms, which have
concentrated the attention of most of the studies. This effort is part of the
Chile’s new wave of studies which focus on sociopolitical processes that
followed the transitional period, after the successive waves of social
movements since 2005 (e.g. Garretón, 2012; Ruiz, 2015; Donoso & Von Bulöw,
2017).
In this new
research context, the book stands out in offering novel interpretations for
Chilean conflicts, based on different modalities of inquiry and diverse conceptual
tools, which are predominantly taken from critical disciplines such as a
historical institutionalism, critical discourse analysis, political geography
and narrative studies. This pluralism is notably exposed in the Introduction,
which offers a detailed combination and interplay between current international
trends in the comprehension of neoliberalism and the most relevant
contributions of national researchers. This effort draws a map of the main axis
of debate, and it identifies Chile as a significant case study in the general
context of research and critiques on neoliberalism.
The counter
effect of this pluralism is the tensions that the connection of different theoretical
traditions provokes, for they otherwise are in mutual rupture. The most significant
tensions are between neo- Marxist and post-Marxist approaches, and their opposite
emphasis on the reproductive or contentious character of neoliberalism.
Neo-Marxist approaches tend to describe neoliberalism as a set of global
governance mechanisms able to capture or appropriate the logic of social order
and the processes of subjective constitution. In contrast, post- Marxist views
highlight the generative condition that neoliberalism has over the contentious
activity of the subjects under its regime. If those conceptualizations show how
complex neoliberalism is, they make difficult to offer a cohesive dialogue and
view between articles, blurring the possibility of a convergent view or
critique able to define what exactly neoliberalism is and how it operates
specifically in Chile.
Chile:
A mature neoliberal society?
As the
editors recognize “the richness of the various workshops and the contribution
of the discussants also showed difficulties in problematizing the
‘neoliberalism object’” (p.23).[1]
This difficulty became particularly problematic when the book tries to propose
a distinctive epistemological object for the new research agenda.
Implicitly or
explicitly, the majority of articles conceptualize Chile as a case of mature
neoliberal society, which means that Chile is the country with one of the earliest
and most widespread transitions to neoliberalism, and a society where neoliberalism
widely determines the dynamics of social interaction. One dilemma of this
characterization is to place Chile as an incommensurable case study, whose
particularities are beyond the general characteristics of current neoliberalism.
This characterization includes the risk of mystifying Chile as a case of study
and producing an isolated research program, where Chile is singularized from
the international waves of neoliberal studies and from regional understandings
of oppositions to neoliberalism. By fortune, the still preliminary
characterization of Chile and its neoliberal order keeps the debate open to
further discussion.
Bibliography
Della Porta,
Donatella (2015). Social Movements in Times of Austerity. Cambridge:
Polity Press.
Donoso,
Sofía, and Marisa von Bülow eds. (2017). Social Movements in Chile.
Organization, Trajectories, and Political Consequences. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Garretón,
Manuel Antonio (2012). Neoliberalismo corregido y progresismo limitado. Los
gobiernos de la Concetación en Chile, 1990-2010. Santiago de Chile: Arcis/Clacso.
Ruiz Encina,
Carlos (2015). De nuevo la sociedad. Santiago de Chile: Lom ediciones.
[1]
„[L]a richesse des divers
ateliers et l‘apport des discutant savait aussi montré des difficultés à
problématiser l’objet ‘néolibéralisme’.“ (Author’s translation)