Lost in the Long Transition: Struggles for Social Justice in Neoliberal Chile

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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, the pursuit of 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. The authors, who come from the disciplines of cultural anthropology, history, political science, and geography, focus their research perspectives on issues including 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, the fight for affordable housing, homelessness and citizenship rights under the judicial system, and the gender experiences of returned exiles. In the years leading up to the global financial meltdown of 2008, many Latin American governments, responding to inequities at home and attempting to pull themselves out of debt 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 struggles 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.

Reviews

This book. . . generally adopts a narrative style and approach more attuned to the moment of its production, when opposition to neoliberalism was muted. But it is a testament to the books quality that it develops insights of paramount importance for understanding present dynamics and discontent. In the introduction, Alexander provides a synthetic and accessible overview of neoliberalisms Chilean trajectory. He highlights how ongoing legacies from the dictatorship and the continued application of pro-free market policies belied efforts by the presidencies of the Center-Left from 1990 to 2010 to complete a transition to democracy and produce 'growth with equity.' Alexander insightfully organizes the volume into two sections: 'Private Interests and the Public Good' and 'In Place, At Issue.' These titles encapsulate core themes and point to basic tensions in contemporary Chile. ... Clearly, as the contributors to this volume demonstrate, neoliberalism is of primary importance in understanding the contemporary context. The essays drawn together here go a long way in furthering our understanding of neoliberalisms reach and its present contradictions in Chile. * Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology *

Author Bio

William L. Alexander is assistant professor of cultural anthropology at University of North Carolina Wilmington and author of Resiliency in Hostile Environments: A Comunidad Agr'cola in Chile's Norte Chico.