Sociologies (May 2017)
Expertise et amour dans la défense de la nature
Abstract
Through the ethnographic study of the daily politic life of a citizen association that defends the foothills of the Andes, in Santiago, Chile, this paper describes the role of the emotional dimension in the search these citizens develop in order to participate. That means, the effects in the success or failure of interactions. But beyond the affects in the exchanges between the authorities and the citizens in the heart of the Chilean democracy, the analysis of the association’s collective action reveals how the institutional “faults” of this democracy – as the absence of spaces to participate – can be transformed by the citizens in occasions to think and conceive new political projects or, thoroughly, how they want to live in their neighborhoods or territories.
