Professor Joel Stillerman - Identity Investments: Middle-class Responses to Precarious Privilege in Neoliberal Chile

IAS Visiting Fellow Professor Joel Stillerman delivers a seminar on their research - This presentation provides an overview of conceptual and empirical arguments from the book, Identity Investments. It uses the concepts of identity investments and precarious privilege to understand Chile’s middle classes in contrast to other studies that emphasize opportunity hoarding and social mobility. Identity investments are deeply held values that motivate middle class market behaviour. The presentation will explore the identity investments of four middle class groups – activists, moderate Catholics, youngsters, and pragmatists, which differ in ideological orientation, age cohort membership, economic position, and residential location. Precarious privilege explains that identity investments reflect Chilean middle class families’ economic vulnerability as neoliberal policies generate job instability. Middle class families’ resources, political and ideological affiliations, age cohort membership, and neighbourhood residence explain variations in their identity investments. The study relies on interviews, participant observation, and photographs of homes in two Santiago, Chile communities and its results offer insights into Chile’s dramatic political changes. For more information about the IAS, please visit - https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/ias