ABSTRACT
José Weinstein is an accomplished young Chilean scholar who recently completed his doctoral studies at Louvain, Belgium. Even before his work at the doctoral level, he had established an impressive reputation for his research on the youth of Chile, particularly the urban “popular” youth. In this chapter, he concentrates on the ¿fender differences between young men and women in poor areas. The women face a highly restricted future, with few options other than the traditional roles of wife and mother. In one sense, the situation of the men is even bleaker, as many see no clear future for themselves. What the two have in common is little control over the world in which they live. It is no surprise that these urban youth were the backbone of the widespread urban protests of the mid-1980s. The vast majority also voted for change in 1988 and 1989, but their future political tendencies as well as their social condition remain unclear.
Juan Eduardo Garcia-Huidobro has been an eminent scholar in Chile for many years. The holder of two doctorates (in education and philosophy), he directed CIDE (Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo) for much of the Pinochet era. He was among the first in Chile to offer a comprehensive theory of popular culture (see the final chapter in this volume).
