Social Protest and Conflict in Radical Neoliberalism

This book analyzes collective protests and contentious politics in Chile over a span of 13 years. Utilizing an unprecedented database developed by the Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES), twenty social scientists provide a systematic overview of conflicts between 2008 and 2020 in the so-called “laboratory of neoliberalism”. Readers will understand different aspects of social protest in Chile in the realms of labor, student activism, pension issues, as well as contentious episodes regarding gender rights, socio-territorial mobilizations, conflicts over memory, and the thorny Mapuche question. Readers will also discover spectacular findings about the popular rebellion of 2019 as well as an inventory of contentious mechanisms and tactical repertoires routinely employed by Chilean civil society groups. Alfredo Joignant (Ph.D. in Political Science, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France) is a full professor in political science at the School of Political Science, Universidad Diego Portales, and principal investigator at the Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES). He is a past president of the Chilean Political Science Association. His research has appeared in journals such as Democratization, Sociological Perspectives, Sociology Compass, Memory Studies, Journal of Latin American Studies, Cahiers internationaux de sociologie, and Revue française de science politique, among others. His last book was Acting Politics. A Critical Sociology of the Political Field (Routledge, 2019). He is currently studying the role of public intellectuals in transnational fields and circuits and the transformations of modern capitalism. Nicolás M. Somma (Ph.D., University of Notre Dame, Indiana) is an associate professor at the Instituto de Sociología, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and associate researcher at the Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES, Chile). He teaches and does research on political sociology, social movements, and historical-comparative sociology. He has published in journals such as Party Politics, Social Movement Studies, American Behavioral Scientist, Latin American Politics and Society, and Comparative Politics, among many others. He is completing a mixed-methods project on labor movements in Latin America, and beginning a study of popular rebellions in the same region since 1989.