Cultural Sociology in Chile: The Explanatory Power of Subjectivity

This article explores how cultural sociology in Chile has illuminated the role of subjectivities in processes of social change. Amid pivotal historical moments – including the end of the dictatorship (1990), the return to democracy and the consolidation and contestation of the neoliberal model – cultural sociology has sought to understand the emergent subjectivities among Chileans and their responses to these transformations. While economics and political science were focusing on indicators of development and democratic representation, cultural sociology was foregrounded on lived experiences, emotions and moral evaluations as key analytical dimensions. As an empirical category, subjectivity challenges dominant technocratic narratives that frame development, governance and social cohesion through quantitative metrics. Instead, it provides an interpretive lens that reveals the affective and experiential dimensions of social life, people’s daily emotions, fears and beliefs, exposing concerns and demands that politico-economic indicators often overlook. Central to this perspective are questions such as: How have the dictatorship and the neoliberal model transformed Chileans’ subjectivities? What are the subjective experiences and consequences of modernisation? What kind of relationship do these subjectivities establish with politics, and to what extent do they function as an impulse, a detour or resistance to these specific social transformations? This article examines how Chilean cultural sociology has employed the notion of subjectivity as a heuristic resource to analyse neoliberal transformations and experiences of resistance found in everyday life – an intellectual endeavour that has entailed engaging in a broader cultural battle over the Chilean model. Through the lens of subjectivity, we explore its analytical contributions in four key fields: social inequalities, social class and work, gender relations, and memory studies and politicisation, demonstrating its significance for understanding how individuals navigate and interpret their social realities. In each of these fields, subjectivity played a critical role in interpreting Chileans’ experiences of neoliberal modernisation.