Abstract

SAAVEDRA GALLO, Gonzalo  and  MARDONES LEIVA, Karen. Social representations on the sea and artisanal ocean fishing in Chilean neoliberalism. Rev. colomb. soc. [online]. 2021, vol.44, n.1, pp.143-167.  Epub Nov 28, 2021. ISSN 0120-159X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/rcs.v44n1.87914.

We use a mixed methodological strategy based on ethnographic records, interviews, natural semantic networks, and surveys with Likert-type scales, to construct a series of ethnographic images on the sea and artisanal fishing on the coast of Chile. Our theoretical approach incorporated conceptual axes of structuralist and hermeneutical anthropology, referring in particular to the problem of the profound symbolic configurations that condition, at least in part, its dynamics of representation and signification. We also based on the critical perspectives of Karl Polanyi on economic liberalism, a fundamental reference for socio-anthropological analyses of the economy as a cultural fact. The investigation took place in a complex economic-cultural context (the artisanal fishing space), of special interest in a country with more than 4,000 km of coastline and where neoliberal dogmas have become deeply entrenched as the result of a series of structural reforms introduced from the mid-1970s. Our results, situated in three coastal territories on the coasts of southern and north-central Chile (Calbuco, Valdivia, and Los Vilos), enable us to relativize the ideological determinism of the self-regulated market as the backbone and axis of local economies. On the one hand, in the imaginaries of the littoral societies investigated the sea appears signified as the space that provides sustenance, and in second place as life and happiness. The people only assign it a marginal signification linked to making money. On the other, artisanal fishing is represented as work, sustenance, and way of life. Here too the references that connect artisanal fishing with the idea of business are only marginal. Once again, the assumption that speaks to us of the predominance of a capitalist, rational-instrumental ethos seems to be an unfounded suspicion, and this forces us to re-think how in Chile and other parts of Latin America we conceive the ideo-material rootedness of neoliberalism as a political and ideologic-cultural project. Likewise, a logical consequence of the evidence collected is a return to debate on the relative nature of what we call economic facts.

Descriptors: artisanal fishing, culture, neoliberalism, sea.

Keywords : Chile; fishermen; neoliberalism; significations; social representations.

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