ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the 2019 citizens’ uprising in Chile and its aftermath in light of some key features of the global wave of social movements and citizens’ uprisings in the 2010s. Based on interviews, direct observation, and analysis during both the Chilean outbreak and a series of international mobilisations throughout the decade, it points out eight shared features of mobilisations in different regions of the world that together contribute to a better understanding of the Chilean movement and its outcomes: scales and spaces of action; reticular and adhocratic forms of organising; claims formulated in terms of dignity, social justice, and democratisation; strong subjective dimensions; widespread expressive and artistic dimensions; spaces of encounters and experience; intersectional encounters and cross-fertilisation; the co-existence of a more pragmatic relationship to institutional politics and anti-parties stances. The cases of the Chilean Awakening and most uprisings of the 2010s plead for longer-term and more complex analyses of the links between social movements, institutional politics, and social change. While the political processes initiated or strengthened by social movement dynamics should not be underestimated, reducing social movements to their impact on institutional politics is an analytical bias that prevents reaching a full understanding of some crucial dimensions of these actors and the change they drive.
