Forging Participation: An Ethnography of Expert Civic Culture in Santiago, Chile — The Case of the Precordillera Defense Network
Abstract
This thesis examines how a citizen association — the Red de Defensa de la Precordillera (RDP) — transforms a native Andean forest in Santiago, Chile, into an object of defense, advocacy, and research. This forest, known as El Panul, located in the pre-Andean piedmont of Santiago in the municipality of La Florida, is threatened by new real estate development projects. Citizens mobilize to protect this endangered natural space.
This research analyzes the daily lives of members of this association who committed to defending the precordillera between 2007 and 2010, and how they invent different ways of participating in decision-making processes. It investigates the strategies deployed to try to exert influence in a context characterized by the absence of participation mechanisms. Committed citizens forge their own path — full of contradictions, back-and-forth, mistakes, victories, and failures — in their attempt to influence projects that affect them but from which they are excluded. This thesis follows the process of how, little by little, citizens try to show and demonstrate in public debates, meetings, and gatherings why the destruction of the forest should be prevented. Citizens move beyond their neighborhoods to make their problem visible and comprehensible in the public arena, since in the eyes of officials, authorities, and other citizens, the problem does not exist.
The first chapter accounts for the reasons that led the association to form and to transform what could be seen as an environmental conflict into a political issue. Ethnography allowed me to analyze how citizens "enter politics" by making a controversy around a specific territory public. I examine how the 1993 mudslide in Quebrada de Lo Cañas can trigger political engagement, and how Panul becomes the political cause of the association. Following the analysis of the 1993 catastrophe, the question arises as to why the residents of the La Florida precordillera took more than ten years to form a political association (formally created in 2006). To answer this, the second chapter addresses post-dictatorship (1973–1990) collective action processes to understand the conditions under which new mobilization processes emerged in Santiago. Although the denunciation processes constructed by the RDP are new, they must be understood in light of the authoritarianism inherited from the dictatorship, particularly regarding citizen participation. To reach different arenas of discussion, citizens must be able to mobilize specific knowledge about the precordillera. In chapters three and four, I analyze the two main avenues pursued by RDP members: scientific expertise and the legal route, to demonstrate the importance and uniqueness of El Panul. Gradually, these citizens learn and become experts on the precordillera, enabling them to confront authorities and engage in various participation forums. Finally, I analyze the role of the affective dimension in exchanges between officials and citizens, observing how success or failure largely depends on emotions, empathy, and the feelings present in interactions.
Ultimately, through an ethnography of participation, this work shows the political process of citizens as it unfolds — situated and localized — beyond a purely institutional perspective. Despite the lack of spaces for citizen participation, through the "institutional failures" of Chilean democracy, citizens are able to create, think, and imagine political projects in relation to their neighborhoods, territories, or more broadly, to how they want to live.
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