Neither urban nor rural: intergenerational changes in subjective territorial affiliation in the Maule Region of Chile.

Abstract

Using data from a 2014 survey of 1,634 people in the Maule region of Chile, we examine the intergenerational evolution of subjective perceptions of territorial affiliation and its link with objective definitions of rurality and urbanity. The study applies a correlational method the “chi-squared test” to determine the associations between variables. The hypothesis is corroborated: subjective territorial affiliations do not always coincide with administrative territorial classifications, and changes of affiliation between successive generations do not necessarily go from rural to urban, but give rise to profiles with diverse characteristics, one of the more important being a rural-urban hybridization. It is concluded that the Maule region is increasingly mixed in terms of identity, thus providing concrete evidence to challenge the idea that urban progress is linear and having only one meaning

Keywords

• Urbanidad
• urbanización
• ruralidad
• adscripción territorial subjetiva