Doing ethnography on urban conflicts, peace and violence: A multisensorial journey in post-18O Chile

Keywords: social justice, mobilization, peace, violence, care, solidarity
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 05:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 06:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 6

Abstract

Mobilisation and protests for social justice that began 18 October 2019 in Chile raised enthusiasm all around the globe. Among the claims for redressing the inequalities in the pervading neoliberalist structure of the society, gender justice is a broad agenda that especially feminist protestors have been pursuing, together with indigenous and migrants’ rights movements. The mobilisation has thus far contributed to the process of collective drafting of a new constitution for the country.

Building on multisensorial ethnographic insights gathered in January-February 2020, prior to the global outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, this paper discusses the mobilisation and analyses especially the visuality of the protest and relations of care and solidarity that have emerged within the mobilisation. It walks the reader in central Santiago de Chile and discusses themes relevant to the praxis of conducting research within a non-war conflict site, which is embedded in struggles for claiming space, both figuratively and concretely, and crafting practices that contribute to greater social justice. Simultaneously, they are enmeshed in manifold forms of violence that need to be addressed for peace to become possible. In so doing, the paper seeks to contribute to debates on the entangled forms of everyday peace and violence, drawing on peace and conflict studies and connecting these with critical geographies of peace (Williams & McConnell 2011; Koopman 2017).