Abstract
This article describes the origin and development of local political culture in the La Florida commune (Lo Cañas neighborhood), located in the foothills of the Andes, on the edge of Santiago, Chile. It presents an ethnography of la Red, a civil association created in 2006 to 'protect' the foothills from real estate development. First, this work analyses how nature's destruction is experienced as a threat to the way of life and utopian project of residents and Red members. The construction of the neighborhood is intimately related to the configuration of this political project. Different ideals of what the environment means were studied in order to analyze the construction of, and the engagement with, this space. Through this case study, we consider two different utopias: the community project as a common savoir-vivre in the precordillera and, later, the creation of a civil-political project aimed at producing political changes and maintaining a way of life.Keywords: Collective action, environmental protection, precordillera, Santiago, utopia.
Highlights
IntroductionThis article tries to understand 'environmental defense' on a daily level, through a study of microprocesses rather than large-scale events or national-level campaigns
Utopia, environment and development in Santiago's foothillsThis article tries to understand 'environmental defense' on a daily level, through a study of microprocesses rather than large-scale events or national-level campaigns
The Red members, in turn, use the term 'environmental protection' to argue against the notion of sustainability mobilized in the dossiers of real estate developers, because the latter does not take into account the specific characteristics of the piedmont
Summary
This article tries to understand 'environmental defense' on a daily level, through a study of microprocesses rather than large-scale events or national-level campaigns This 'defense' is by a small group of neighbors living in the Andean precordillera on the outskirts of Santiago, capital of Chile, in the commune of La Florida. Living in a natural environment implied getting away from the city, and when this utopia was threatened by urban growth, their political mode became engagement. This engagement implied a personal effort, and a critique of dominant way of seeing and considering environmental protection in Chile. For the Red, utopia no longer implies creating an 'alternative' way of life on the margins of the dominant model, and Red members no longer seek a rupture with this model
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