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Rodríguez, Juan Pablo (2020)Palgrave MacmillanABSTRACT„This book explores the relationship between recent theoretical debates around the fate of critique of neoliberal capitalism and critical theory, on the one hand, and the critical theories generated in and by social movements in Chile, on the other. By taking the idea of social critique as a field that encompasses both critical social theories and the practices of social criticism carried out by social movements, Resisting Neoliberal Capitalism in Chile explore how the student and the Pobladores movements map, resist and contest neoliberal capitalism in commodified areas such as education and housing in Chile, one of the first ‘neoliberal experiments’ in Latin America and the world.“EXCERPT„Perhaps today, more clearly than at the beginning of the 2000s—when the alter-globalisation movement burst onto the scene—Marx’s critique of capitalism can function as an overarching interpretative horizon for both critical social theorists, as well as protesters and activists. The fact that social movements started out from very specific demands in different fields, and had been able to publicly mobilise an anti-neoliberal discourse that questions the current organisation of society as a whole, should be seen as a way to repose the problem of the possibility of social critique and its multiple political articulations. Consequently, I construct the main object of study of this book—social critique—as a field that encompasses both the realm of what has traditionally been understood broadly as critical social theory, and the practices of social critique carried out by social movements. Following the work of Luc Boltanski (Boltanski and Thévenot 1999; Boltanski 2011), my assumption is that if theoretical social critique is meant to be socially relevant, it must take seriously the practices of social critique carried out by ordinary actors.“ (p. 8)