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Citizenship Studies, Vol. 4, No. 3, 2000

Neo-liberalisms New GenderedMarket Citizens: The Civilizing

Dimension of Social Programmes inChileVERONICA SCHILD

This article explores the reconguration of social citizenship, or marketcitizenship, underway in Chile, as one crucial dimension of the refashioning ofstate institutions along neo-liberal lines in Latin America. It focuses on thecivilizing dimension of social citizenship, as an instance of the states involve-ment in the regulation of subordinate populations. Specically, the articlestudies the case of new social policy aimed at poverty alleviation. Inspired by

Michel Foucaults late work but moving beyond it, it examines institutionaltransformation as on-the-ground practices through which policies take effect andsees market citizenship as emerging from the rearticulation of the efforts ofmyriad individuals located at different levels of government, civil society, and

poor and working-class communities. In this process, state agents are trans-

lators on the one hand of ofcial documents into instances of participatorylearning and empowerment, and on the other of peoples realities into instancesof documentary categories of poverty. This culturalpolitical transformation ofneo-liberal modernization in Chile and beyond is potentially radical, and weneed to ask: to what extent will the new market terms of belonging in thenational community, which increasingly permeate private and public actions anddiscourse, change the very material and cultural contexts in which peoples livesand struggles are framed?

Citizenship has been a central preoccupation of projects of state formation andcapitalist modernization in Latin America since independence. At different

moments, specic cultural contents of citizenship have explicitly stated the termsof belonging in the political community. Although by denition citizenship isabout legitimate membership, beyond this narrow basis, and the legal issuesstemming from it, it is centrally about who has the appropriate qualities to be amember of the national community. Citizenship, then, is encrusted in a series of

(Veronica Schild, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Western

Ontario, Social Science Centre, London, Ontario N6A 5C2, Canada.

ISSN 1362-1025 print; ISSN 1469-3593 online/00/030275-31 2000 Taylor & Francis Ltd 275

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notions of deservedness which are not exhausted by its legal denition. Nowhereis this more evident than in the arena of social welfare. In the 20th century,legitimate membership came to include the right to social entitlements. Centralto this right to entitlements is the notion that one has to possess the qualities

needed to legitimately claim such rights. This is the moral, or civilizing,dimension of citizenship and an instance of the states involvement in theregulation of subordinate populations, or what Philip Abrams has so aptly termedpolitically organized subjection. It is, furthermore, a dimension that isrecongured differently in different nation-states at different historical moments.

This article explores the shifting notions of social citizenship underway inChile, as one crucial dimension of the refashioning of state institutions alongneo-liberal lines in Latin American electoral democratic contexts. Fiscal re-trenchment, along with the accompanying privatization and decentralization of

the provision of education, health, and social services, characterizes the disman -tling of earlier state-centric, populist arrangements of Latin American welfarestates. These trends are coterminous with the neo-liberal restructuring of the stateitselfor so-called neo-liberal modernizationand efforts to address the prob-lems of massive poverty and inequality. This neo-liberal modernization with ahuman face is the context for my analysis. Citizens are newly conceived andproducedas empowered clients, who as individuals are viewed as capable ofenhancing their lives through judicious, responsible choices as consumers ofservices and other goods. These citizens are enterprising agents, consumers

and producers, whose aim is to maximize their quality of life as individualswithin small communities, for example, neighbourhoods, schools, or healthclinics. The thrust of the shift in emphasis, in conceptions of citizenship,from clients of public goods to empowered clients is ostensibly to make citizensresponsiblethrough their own individual choices for themselves. Becausethe cultural contents shaping these neo-liberal political subjects are none otherthan the liberal norms of the marketplace, I refer to such citizens as marketcitizens.1

The domain of social policy, and within that of programmes stemming from

the new social policy which is rapidly becoming the norm throughout the LatinAmerican region (Bienefeld, 1997), is central for understanding the entrench-ment of neo-liberal modernizations in electoral democratic contexts. The newsocial policy claims that welfare problems are best solved within a frameworkthat maintains the primacy of the market in the interests of state decentralization,greater exibility and efciency. It also articulates a reconguration of stateresponsibilities toward those sectors in need of social assistance that differsradically from the one in place in the post-World War II period. The stateappears as only one partner, while great emphasis is placed on the involvementof so-called civil societyin essence, the private sector broadly understood toinclude business, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including philan-thropic organizations, and professional groups. Active participation of clients asconsumers in the delivery of services is the cornerstone of the new social policy,which is in sharp contrast with the client relation of earlier welfare rights.

The approach I use to examine the link between innovative social programmesand Latin American congurations of a new social citizenship focuses on

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Neo-liberalism s Gendered Market Citizens

institutional transformation as on-the-ground practices through which policiestake effect. This approach occupies a position between, on the one hand, thosewho tend to regard state (welfare) policies entirely in terms of their stated goalsand the degree to which they reach them, and those who tend to focus very

strongly on policies as discursive formations. The former tend to viewrecipients as ahistorical rational actors, and the latter see the production ofsubjectivities as the effect of discursive formations without ever actuallylooking at the specic institutions built up to do this. My position in this articletakes its inspiration from Michel Foucaults work, and specically through hisconcern with governmentality, bio-power and techniques of the self, in empha-sizing the moral/educational dimension of social policy discourses, particularlywhen they make claims linking proper forms of social citizenship with the needto address the perceived wants of subordinate groups.2 Having said this,

however, I offer an analysis which attends to what I would call the materialityof processes leading to the redenition of social citizenship. In other words, Iexplore the effects of the ways in which social policies, and the programmes thatow from them, rearticulate the efforts of myriad individuals located at differentlevels of government, civil society, and poor and working-class communities.

Following this approach, I argue that the conguration of a marketizedcitizenship is an outcome of the redirecting of peoples work, not only of poorand working-class people and localities targeted by social programmes, but alsoof programme coordinators, of professionals and of other experts working within

and outside state agencies, not to mention that veritable army of extensionofcers (promotores(as)) implementing programmes in the eld. Doing thingsdifferently, including using a novel grammar for accessing state resources, iswhat I have in mind when I suggest that neo-liberal modernizations, ashegemonic projects, ensnare social subjects, make them act as agents and henceimplicate them in their own unfolding (new) subjectivities. 3

I take social policy and the programmes stemming from them to be oneparadigmatic form of governing through which subjects and needs are produced.Furthermore, forms of governing are always gendered and gendering, and so are

their effects.4 In other words, individuals, or members of distinct client groups,and their needs, are not pre-given static and gender-neutral categories but areinstead socially and historically constructed through contextualized processes.5

The relation between the state, in this case in the form of institutions in chargeof social policies and programmes, and subjects is always dynamic. Thus, forexample, the state does not simply reect gender inequalities but, through itspractices, plays an important role in constituting them; simultaneously, genderpractices become institutionalized in historically specic state forms (Pringleand Watson, 1992, p. 64). Social policy has typically represented the domain ofsocial policy as masculine, and treated women as the objects or recipients ofpolicy decisions (Pringle and Watson, 1992, p. 57). The historical record,however, suggests a different story. Women, through their day-to-day activitiesas professionals and practitioners of one kind or another (for example, health oreducation practitioners, experts, social workers and extension workers in theeld), have been the concrete, although largely overlooked, agents for therecongurations of social policy.6 Today, women as agents are at the heart of the

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efforts to transform those who are excluded from the benets of an empoweredlife in the market, into active, responsible citizens.

In the following pages, I explore the shifting notions of social citizenship ofLatin Americas neo-liberal modernizations by studying the practices and dis-

courses of new social policies in Chile. Chile has the distinct reputation of beinga long-term pioneer in social policy reform. By 1973, the country was con-sidered to have one of the two most advanced social insurance systems in theWestern Hemisphere (Mesa-Lago, 1978). The meaning of social citizenshipremained throughout entwined with universal notions of rights as entitlements,enshrined in law, and guaranteed by an active Estado de Beneciencia (WelfareState). The reality, of course, was rather different: the policies and programmesin place were achieved piecemeal through protracted struggles, and they ex-cluded whole categories of people not active in the labour market, for example,

peasants, the self-employed and the unemployed.7

Women remained subordi-nates to the end, though social legislation introduced throughout the period didbenet them, especially in their capacity as members of families, and to a lesserdegree as workers.8 Today, Chile is once again considered a pioneer because itbecame the rst country in the world to privatize its state pension programme,replacing completely the traditional public programme (Mesa-Lago, 1978). Since1990, its new social policies serve as blueprints for social policy reform in otherLatin American countries.

I begin with a critical examination of the recent Latin American debate on

social citizenship, arguing that rather than mechanically embracing T.H. Mar-shalls awed model of social citizenship, we rescue instead his historicalapproach linking the rise of political identities with specic state forms incontexts shaped by conict and unequal power relations. I will then move to adiscussion of the evolution of Chiles neo-liberal modernization, highlightingbriey its social costs, and concentrating on efforts since 1990 to combineneo-liberal modernization with ostensibly social democratic goals, or growthwith equity. I suggest that the politicalcultural changes associated with themodernization of state agencies in charge of social policy and programmes, as

heralded by the new social policy, are a fertile setting for understanding thereconguration of social citizenship in Chile. To illustrate this, I examine indetail Entre Todos (Amongst Us All), one of the showcase programmes of theSocial Investment Programmes. Social Investment Programmes are one versionof the new social policy that enjoy widespread support among national andinternational policy experts and practitioners, NGOs, and a range of developmentfunding agencies, including the World Bank and private foundations. EntreTodos, I show, is one paradigmatic instance of the intricate and extendedprocesses of work, bringing together potential clients with bureaucrats, profes-sionals, and local politicians that produce market citizens.

The Incipient Latin American Citizenship Debate

Citizenship has received increasing attention in contemporary debates on democ-racy in Latin America.9 Much of the emergent literature takes for granted thetri-partite notion of citizenship promoted by the inuential British sociologist

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T.H. Marshall. Citizenship, Marshall proposed, is best understood as an evol-utionary achievement of three interrelated dimensions or types of rights: civicrights, those rights which are necessary for individual freedom, appeared rst;they were followed by political rights, the right to elect and be elected and thus

to participate in the exercise of political power; and, nally, social rights,access to those economic and social conditions necessary to live a civilized life,according to prevailing standards, and which presumably give the fullest ex-pression to the exercise of citizenship. This last dimension of citizenship is,according to Marshall, a 20th century achievement (Marshall, 1963, pp. 7374).Social citizenship, in this evolutionary scheme, is the necessary corollary ofsocial democracythe political form of tamed capitalism Marshall optimisti-cally saw as realizable in this century. In addition to rights to the means forliving a decent, meaningful life, social citizenship stipulates (non-compulsory)

duties which spell out new ways of acting as citizens. Central among these is theactivity of paid work (Sarvasy, 1997, p. 57).

For Latin Americanists, and more generally for scholars preoccupied withdemocratization in the region and beyond, citizenship in its Marshallian versionhas become a taken-for-granted model of modern citizenship that poses chal-lenges for new democracies. In transforming a notion of citizenship proposed inthe very specic circumstances of post-war Britain in 1949 into a set ofnormative prescriptionsa series of steps to be followed either to build oninadequate forms, or achieve the non-existent formsthis new scholarship

reproduces the major aws and limitations of Marshalls account.Appropriating Marshalls tri-partite notion as a universal model of modern

citizenship is to forget the limitations of a deeply contextualized account. JyetteKlausen reminds of this in her searing critique of the use of Marshalls notionof social citizenship by European reformers and welfare state theorists. Shepoints out that a consideration of the longstanding experiences of Scandinavianwelfare states, arguably the most developed in Europe, would have resulted inless sanguine conclusions about the link between social citizenship and socialrights (Klausen, 1995, p. 248). Marshalls emphasis on the historically con-

structed link between certain rights and their class-based enabling institutions iseither downplayed or ignored by his followers in Europe and Latin America. Hecharacterized the social dimension of citizenship as the single most importantevolutionary achievement of capitalist Britain in the present century. AlthoughMarshall never abandoned the view that capitalism was synonymous with classconict, he was convinced that the social dimension of citizenship would be aneffective means of class abatement (Marshall, 1963). Just as the war had beena leveller of sorts of class-based status, so would social citizenshipproposedMarshall in the aftermath of World War IIcontribute to undermine the culturesof class and thus blunt class conict.10 In practice, the demand for socialcitizenship that governments not only treat citizens as equals but actually makethem equals did not translate into granting social rights without strings attached.In fact, welfare states designed to entrench social citizenship promoted newforms of desirable behaviours, policed through criteria of eligibility, and ex-cluded the undeserving (Klausen, 1995, p. 248). Thus, in the name of upholdinguniversal rights to entitlements, welfare states congured new ways for govern -

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ing subordinate populations. Shortly before his death, however, Marshall ex-pressed his disenchantment with the potential of social citizenship to educateconicting classes. In an essay written in the 1960s, and largely ignored bytheorists of citizenship in Latin America and beyond, he pointed out that the

behaviour and values of the ruling classes had not been changed by socialcitizenship and thus that it had failed to blunt class conict after all (Marshall,1972).11

Another fundamental weakness of Marshalls account of citizenship is itsgender bias. Marshalls conception of social citizenship hinges on the world ofpaid work in the public sphere, and the status it confers to workers. Thisconception takes for granted the gendered division of labour. The community offull membersin other words, the place in which legitimate members havelegitimate claims to entitlementsis by denition a masculine world of work.

Excluded from the very denition of community is the world of reproductive,unpaid work which is predominantly the responsibility of women (Pateman,1989, pp. 184185). Women, it turns out, in their capacity as mothers andhomemakers have no legitimate basis for claiming entitlements in their ownright, but are dependent on employed men or on the state. Women, in thisconception of social citizenship, are at best second-class citizens (Pateman,1989; Sarvasy, 1997; Vogel, 1991). Feminist scholars have convincingly shownthat women present a dilemma for Marshalls denition of social citizenship, andthat because of the inherent gender bias in his account, his notion of rights as

entitlements poses serious problems for a conception of universal democraticcitizenship.12 Indeed, seen from the vantage point of womens peculiar relationto rights as entitlements as conceived by Marshall, social citizenship is far fromuniversal or democratic.

The conventional scholarship on Latin American democratization ignoresthese important challenges to Marshalls conception of social citizenship. Someof it is, in fact, surprisingly ahistorical in its application of Marshalls accountas a model of modern citizenship. Adam Przeworski et al., for example, suggestthat the new democracies face a difcult task: they must address simultaneously

the civil, political, and social requirements of citizenship (1995, p. 36). As-suming new democracies to be tabula rasas on which symbolisms, institutions,and practices must be inscribed anew, they state that these emerging democraciescannot follow the long experience of Western Europe, where the rule of law, thesystem of political rights, and the rights to social welfare and education werefaced as successive challenges (p. 36).

Those scholars who are more sensitive to the historical specicities of LatinAmerica insist that in the case of Latin America there is a vast distance betweenformal rights of citizenship and meaningful citizenship in practice, particularlyin the dimensions of civic and political rights (Jelin, 1995, 1996; Roberts, 1995).According to Jelin, for example, in those cases where formal citizenship rightsare clearly dened, people have not necessarily been able to exercise them intheir everyday lives (1996, p. 122). These scholars suggest that the modern LatinAmerican experience with citizenship, particularly in the post-WW II, populistperiod, is best characterized as one in which the rights of social citizenship, inother words, the right to social benets, are overdeveloped in relation to political

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and the very tangible effects of those discourses and practices on the lives ofsubordinate categories of people. The welfare state in Latin America andelsewhere was a set of institutions, agencies, and organized practices forgoverning those deserving of entitlements. The neo-liberal state in Latin Amer-

ica is best understood as emerging institutional practices and discourses forempowering people for the market and making them responsible for their ownselves, including their own failures, and, ultimately, their own poverty.

Chiles Neo-liberal Modernization and Social Citizenship

Although there were important variations in the governments that ruled Chilefrom the 1930s to 1973, leading in turn to the expansion or addition of newsocial programmes, and the construction of new categories of beneciaries, there

was a strong continuity in modes of governing the population. The oustingin 1973 of Salvador Allendes Popular Unity government by the bloody coupled by Augusto Pinochet marked the end of that era in Chile. In the ensuingyears, the military not only dismantled the then dominant economic developmentstrategy, it also brutally severed the links that held together the state andcivil society, and redened the meaning of modernity and the goals ofmodernization.13

From the 1930s to 1973, Chiles social reforms were guided by the powerfulimage of an Estado de Beneciencia (Welfare State). After 1973, and over the

course of the next decade, the military embarked on a programme of free-marketreforms which included the privatization and decentralization of governmentsocial responsibilities, whose effect was to dismantle the welfare state. Thisprogramme, known as the Plan de Modernizaciones (Plan of Modernizations),was carried out through legal reforms, policy measures, and the use of unpre -cedented levels of repression. 14 A discourse which saw the market, not the state,as the engine of development, and income distribution and social equity asnatural outcomes of economic growth, not as goals of government planning,framed the reforms. The idea of the Estado Subsidiario (Subsidiary State), a

state subservient to the dictates of the market, replaced the Welfare State,although, as critics have pointed out, the idea of a non-interventionist state wasnever more than a myth. The state, in other words, simply shifted its focus awayfrom being a mediator of class conict, under the guise of protecting labour,to explicitly protecting employers.

The neo-liberal modernizations introduced a signicant shift in discourses ofsocial policy. Accordingly, social spending was to reach the truly needy and notspecial interest groups such as organized labour and organized middle-classprofessionals and public servants. Thus, although social assistance spending wasnot eliminated altogether, it became highly targeted to groups deemed mostvulnerable, the poorest sectors, and mothers with infants.15

The reforms associated with the Chilean economic miracle brought devas-tation to millions of Chileans. Successive orthodox stabilization programmes inthe 1970s and external shocks, coupled with the drastic withdrawal of the statefrom social programmes, led to high levels of unemployment and a sharpdeterioration in living conditions for many (Vergara, 1994, p. 238). Moreover,

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the combined impact of cutbacks in social spending and the drastic loss of wageshad a particularly acute impact on poor and working-class women who retainedsole responsibility for the survival of their children and their families. Furtherreforms in the 1980s led to additional losses in wages and more cuts in social

spending. In 1981, for instance, regressive labour legislation was enshrined inthe new Labour Code, whose main purpose was to privilege employers in theirattempts to rationalize and streamline their operations in search of foreign trade.These reforms were followed by the privatization of health and social security,and by the devolution of responsibility for public education and social pro-grammes to municipal governments.

Flexibilization of labour through a policy of systematic subcontracting hasbeen aggressively pursued since the mid-1980s and its effect has been to furtherdrive down wages.16 This strategy of segmentation and cheapening of production

has become known worldwide as the Chileanization of labour because of itsbrutal form.17 In the name of international competitiveness, exibilization hasbecome entrenched in the most dynamic sectors of the export economy: fruitproduction, forestry, shing, the garment industry, and mining (Martnez andDaz, 1996, p. 73). It has also increasingly become the norm in the servicesector.

The segmentation of production is gendered and racialized. Women, mostlyyoung, often with low qualications, working for poor pay, without benets oraccess to social security, make up a vast number of exibilized workers.18

Furthermore, women also make up the majority of people engaged in informal,unregulated income generating activitiesthe ranks of which swelled massivelyduring the late 1970s and 1980s. Today, these workers are linked to the regulatedwork sector through subcontracting. The garment industry is a case in point.National rms and subsidiaries of multinationals, concentrated in Santiago,continue to downsize and streamline their production by subcontracting piece-work. This form of workunregulated, poorly paid, and invisible to theoutsideis rapidly becoming the predominant economic activity among womenin poor neighbourhoods on the periphery of the city. Companies are not simply

tapping into a pool of low skilled female labour, but are often constructing thatpool by releasing their permanent female workers and then subcontracting themfor piecework.19

Access to the many new forms of low paid, low end work in the fast growingservice sector is regulated informally by standards of physical appearance.Racism has received little attention by policy experts and labour analysts.Indeed, the virtual silence around the topic of race and racism in Chile, part ofthe myth that Chile is not a racist country, is mirrored in social science research,including feminist research. Race and racism are simply invisible. Practitionerson the ground, however, know and recognize racism as the single most importantfactor contributing to the limited success of the skills training programmes theyattempt to implement. So far, however, this knowledge has remained at thatlevel, as part of the taken-for-granted landscape with which social workers andextension workers must work to make programmes succeed. They, and theparticipants themselves, single out physical appearance and/or an indigenous (forexample, Mapuche) sounding surname as the main impediments to nding work

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for which they have been trained, particularly in the areas of computer operationand service to the public. As these women repeatedly put it, the message fromemployers seems to be that those who are bajitas y negritas (short and dark), areference to presumed indigenous physical traits, need not apply.

For working people, then, neo-liberal modernization, including the presumedmodernization of labour, brought about through exibilization, has meant a lossof gains and entitlements obtained through bitter struggles, and which wereenshrined in law until 1981. Poor and working-class women, however, havefound new opportunities in the types of work being created, and for many thishas meant, without a doubt, new freedoms from limiting domestic relations.However, the price of these freedoms has been high, for they continue to be thesole persons responsible for the wellbeing of families. The majority, or thosewho do not fall in the categories targeted by social programmes (for example,

those living in extreme poverty who are single heads of households) must do sowithout any form of support.20 Today, the majority of the poor are the so-calledworking poor.21 In fact, according to Martnez and Daz, precarious wagedemployment constitutes the single most important element of poverty in present-day Chile (p. 127).

The rst Concertacion government, an alliance by the Christian Democraticand Socialist parties headed by the Christian Democrat Patricio Aylwin, inheriteda strong economygrowing at unprecedented levels of 7% annually since1986and with levels upwards of 40% of people living in poverty in 1990

(Vergara, 1994, p. 237). It set out to maintain these levels of economic perform -ance, reassuring the business sector that democracy does not generate economicchaos (Gonzales, 1995, p. 113), while also garnering the support of vast sectorsof the population who were adversely affected by the neo-liberal reforms respon-sible for the economic miracle. More broadly, what this reveals is the degree towhich parties of the centre and left in Chile have abandoned their historicalcommitment to social egalitarianism and democratic participation. In this context,handling the social debt, or the social costs of the economic model, with theexisting policy mechanisms became the preferred strategy of a government

attempting to combine economic growth with the pursuit of greater social equity. 22

Poverty levels were reduced during the rst half of the 1990s from 40% toroughly over 30% of the population. 23 However, after nearly a decade of electoraldemocracy, Chile continues to be one of the worlds most inequitable countries:in the World Bank Report of 1995, the country placed seventh worst out of 65 interms of income distribution, a place it shares with Kenya and Zimbabwe (WorldBank, 1997). Although the wages of the very poor have increased somewhat,wages on average have decreased by 10% since 1986, and have not caught up topre-1973 levels. In a country with costs of living increasingly comparable withindustrialized countries, one third of Chileans earn $30 a week.24

Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei, second president of the Concertacio ngovernment (19942000), made the problem of poverty a central plankof his programme.25 The present government of Socialist Ricardo Lagospromises to continue with this focus. The recruitment of sectors of the intelli-gentsia, professionals, the church, NGOs, and private sector philanthropiesfor the governments campaign has a fervour reminiscent of the efforts to

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nd solutions to the social question in the rst part of this century. Thesolutions being proposed today, however, take the unlikely form of a neo-liberal-inspired social democratic formula, or growth with equity. In practice thismeans that the neo-liberal social reforms introduced by Pinochets dictatorship

have not been radically altered. For example, targeting for the purpose ofeffective social spending continues to be the guiding principle of social policyin the elds of health, education, housing, and welfare. Although, the targetedcategories have been expanded to include groups like youth or women heads ofhouseholds, as well as regions, the principle of favouring only those with urgentneeds remains unchanged.

The anti-poverty campaign is guided by a Plan Nacional para la Superacionde la Pobreza (National Plan for Overcoming Poverty). This document stipu-lated the creation of a body representative of civil society, the Consejo

Nacional Para la Superacion de la Pobreza (National Council for OvercomingPoverty). The Consejo is composed of representatives from labour, business,NGOs, the church, and professionals. The goal of this many-sided campaign isto redene poverty and shape a new societal response to it. Among the tasks ofthe Consejo is the development of TV ads to promote a new attitude toward thepoor.26 It has also funded the creation of a programme, Programa Pas(CountryProgramme), to recruit young professionals for work in poor communitiesthroughout the country.27

The Reconstitution of the Discourse of Poverty

Since 1990, the neo-liberal discourse of modernization, once limited predomi-nantly to the economic sphere, has come to cover with its dynamic andoptimistic mantle all dimensions of social life. The problem of poverty is noexception. The best and the brightest of left and left-of-centre professionals andintellectuals, many with postgraduate degrees from US and European universi-ties, have embraced the task of eshing out the contours of this discourse. 28 Forthese people, many of whom spent the Pinochet period housed in private

research institutes and non-governmental agencies, and in some cases who spenttime abroad as exiles, the dictatorship has become discursively transformed intoa powerful, though admittedly brutal, modernizing force. Eugenio Tironi, aprolic writer and social movement specialist-turned-Information-Minister in theAylwin government, articulated this most clearly in suggesting that there was apurpose to the Pinochet revolution, namely, that it placed the country on a parwith the rest of the modernizing world (Petras and Leiva, 1994, p. 63). Thus,under civilian rule, neo-liberalism has been transmuted into a powerful, politi-cally neutral discourse of modernity and modernization which acts as the newbasis for legitimation in Chile.

As far as social policy transformation is concerned, the discourse of neo-liberal modernization emphasizes an active relation to the market, expressed onthe part of citizens as the autonomous exercise of responsibilities, includingeconomic self-reliance and political participation. The implicit value underpin-ning this modernization is freedom through the market, as old a value as theliberal economic thought of Adam Smith. In practice, this has meant that those

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modernize the public sector suggested by successive foreign missions, ortechnical assistance projects of one kind or another.

Moreover, with the ascendance of developmentalist discourses and thenew-found commitment to modernization of the 1960s, such agendas were not

only strongly encouraged but heavily funded by agencies such as the WorldHealth Organization, the Pan American Health Organization, the InternationalLabour Ofce, the International Security Organization, the IberoamericanOrganization of Social Security, and the International Permanent Committeeon Social Security (Mesa-Lago, 1978). The Alliance for Progress, initiated bythe Kennedy administration in 1961, is a key example here. It made fundsavailable to Latin American governments willing to reform and develop theireconomies, and demanded the drafting of national public investment plans as aprerequisite for receiving loans. It is often forgotten that Chile, then an example

of strong, centralized government, became a showcase for the Alliance forProgress.32

The production of the problem of poverty as an object of state policy since themid-1970s has been framed by a discourse of modernization premised on therequirements of the existing model of capital accumulation. Within this dis-course, poverty, and solutions to it, acquire their meaning in relation to themarket. These market-oriented social policy reforms correspond to much broaderefforts to transform the institutions of the state along the lines of a neo-liberalmodernizing project. Efforts to radically transform the form of Latin American

states, and statesociety relations, proceed apace with the retrenchment of aneo-liberal economic model. What is afoot is a profound transformation withequally profound social and politicalcultural effects. Moreover, as with earliermodernization projects, this one relies heavily on the long tradition of guidingand funding by international, predominantly US agencies. Curiously, though, theactive process of institutional forgetting which seems to be inherent to discoursesof modernity, and is central to the transformative thrust of neo-liberal modern-ization, occludes these continuities. The neo-liberal modernization project doesnot really constitute a break with the past in a fundamental way; rather, it relies

on pre-existing discourses, capacities and experiences accumulated over a longperiod of time. In this sense, to borrow Jose Nuns apt formulation, the emphasison the new amounts to an imaginary break with the past (Nun, 1993).

During the period of the dictatorship, practices and discourses which hademerged in the context of social democratic-inspired reforms of the 1960s, forexample, popular education and participation initiatives meant to bring about theChristian Democratic programme of social reform known as revolution infreedom, and which later became key planks in the participatory projects of thePopular Unity government, were preserved and rened. In the 1970s and 1980s,non-governmental organizations housing many erstwhile professionals and ex-perts who had been part of the Popular Unity government, increased massivelyin number with the support of international agencies like the Ford Foundation,the Canadian IDRC, and the Swedish SAREC, to name but a few of the manyagencies that supported the activities of Chilean scholars and professionalsduring the dictatorship. This inux of money, earmarked for the most part forso-called action research with the poor, made possible myriad activities with

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working-class people which guaranteed the survival and perfectioning of thatearlier project of empowerment and participation.

The United Nations Declaration on Women of 1975, which committednational governments to work toward integrating women into the development

process, and which Pinochets government also signed, introduced a newelement to this longstanding tradition of participatory work. UN attention to thecondition of Third World women inuenced the lending practices of solidarityNGOs, church-based and private philanthropic societies, and also, eventually,bilateral agencies like USAID, IDRC, and SAREC. Poor women becameobjects of funding in their own right and participatory research was extended toinclude explicitly feminist concerns. Thus, for example, OXFAM and othersolidarity NGOs supported the creation of womens centres, the activities ofwomens groups, and initiatives in community health and housing; and funding

from the Ford Foundation as well as agencies from Germany, the Netherlands,Denmark, Spain, and elsewhere stipulated that women be a key component ofthose research programmes claiming to promote self-development and partici-pation through popular education schemes. The impact of nearly 20 years ofwork involving educators, social workers, health practitioners, and many otherprofessionals and experts, not to mention local community organizations andactivists, has been signicant. Today, these capacities, experiences, discourses,and personnel are amongst signicant resources from which the new socialpolicy is being crafted.

External funding, and more precisely the rerouting of that funding directly tothe efforts of government ministries and agencies, continues to play a fundamen-tal role in the shaping of the neo-liberal modernization project. Women andcertain feminist discourses on women and development have come to play anexplicit role in this transformation. The national Womens Bureau (Servicio

Nacional de la Mujer), established in 1991, and heavily funded by internationalagencies, has made an important contribution to the rearticulation of existingdiscourses of empowerment and participation of the poor into new anti-povertystrategies: it has made the category poor womenhistorically the main

beneciaries of social action, but always indirectlyvisible and thus an explicittarget of social programmes. In other words, this agency has made it possible forwomen to be represented as explicit agents of anti-poverty strategies.33

The new social policy, and the neo-liberal modernization of the state moregenerallyexpressed in the widespread commitment to issues of governanceis being actively supported by the World Bank, the Interamerican DevelopmentBank (IDB), the US Agency for International Development, and the EconomicCommission for Latin America (Chalmers et al., 1997). Moreover, the WorldBank and the IDB play a prominent role in supporting those programmes in theelds of health, education, and poverty alleviation which promote the sharing ofcosts by beneciaries through their active contribution of time and effort. Morerecently, other organizations like the OAS, various UN agencies, the US-basedNational Endowment for Democracy, and European foundations, as well asinternational representatives of labour and private donors, have all joined insupporting social programmes with this participatory component (Chalmers etal., 1997, p. 562).

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Social Investment Funds: Innovative Social Programmes

Participation of beneciaries and of civil society (for example, the privatesector) is a central plank of Social Investment Programmes, the innovative

poverty alleviation strategy which has become a model of the new social policy.Social Investment Programmes take several forms, for example, support formicro-enterprises, for skills training, or for community self-development. Theymake funds available to projects of self-development proposed by individuals orgroups of individuals from poor communities, on the condition that individualscontribute their own time and labour to them. The civilian coalition governmentsthat have ruled Chile since 1990 have focused increasingly on the need toaddress the so-called social costs of implementing market reforms by increasingsocial spending. They have not, however, altered the market principles govern -

ing the design and implementation of social policy. Eligibility for these povertyalleviation programmes, subsidies, and benets, for example, continues to bedetermined by the targeting approach rst introduced during the dictatorship. Infact, the main innovation in social policy today is to involve recipients in sharingthe costs of social spending through a discourse of participation which, in effect,invites the poor to participate in the modernization effort (Bengoa, 1995;Raczynski, 1995). Clearly, the commitment to repay the so-called social debthas taken the form not of a return to welfarist approachesto notions ofuniversality and entitlements, and ultimately charity, which were the cornerstone

of a Marshallian social citizenshipbut of the explicit embracing of investmentin human capital, the ethos of the neo-liberal approach.

The funding made available by the Solidarity and Social Investment Fund(FOSIS), a social agency established in 1990, is a case in point. FOSISs keyrole is to target specic groups of the poor who are not covered by the socialsecurity net who meet the criteria of poverty stipulated by the Ficha CAS.34

FOSIS aims to be more a Bank for Social Projects than a Ministry of SocialWelfare (Flano, 1991, p. 154). What is innovative about it is its emphasis onsustainable self-directed programmes, its insistence on a relatively high level of

participation in the costs on the part of beneciaries, and its willingness tocoordinate its activities with other governmental institutions and programmes(Glaessner et al., 1995, p. 36). The actual amounts of funds FOSIS makesavailable through its programmes are very limited.35 Nevertheless, since itsinception, FOSIS has become a model of social spending because of its effortsin coordinating the involvement of the private sector and local governments, and,above all, because of the emphasis of its programmes on client participation. Infact, today, every ministry and government agency, as well as private andparty-based foundations which are involved with social programmes, make aportion of their funds available through project-based competition (fondosconcursables) only.36

FOSIS has been characterized as a synthesis between, on the one hand, theapproach of the most progressive sectors of society, of myriad professionals andactivists funded from abroad who during the dictatorship were engaged in actionresearch with the poor, and on the other hand the notion of state subsidiaritydefended by neo-liberals (Flano, 1991 p. 154). This observation hints at the

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development. This programme and project-driven programmes in general areembedded in the logic of decentralization and privatization of the neo-liberalmodel of development.

Reforming municipal government is what is really at stake in local develop -

ment programmes like Entre Todos. Since the programme was rst designedmunicipal governments have been given increased responsibilities. Today, mu-nicipal governments are considered important partners and are asked to play anarticulating role, by contributing materials and technical expertise in urbanmatters. FOSIS provides the funds, sometimes matched by the municipalgovernment, and poor residents are asked to contribute their share, usually in theform of labour power, time and effort, to see a particular project through. Hence,the name Entre Todos. The goals of the programme are best characterized by theterms decentralized and participatory. The promotional discourse describes

the (new) municipal government as an articulating agent, responsible for openingspaces for democratic participation of inhabitants of poor neighbourhoods intheir quest for solutions to their most pressing needs.

These goals directly rearticulate the model for local, neighbourhood-based,grassroots participation created in the early 1960s by the Christian Democraticgovernment and further developed by the Popular Unity government. Thus,although these goals are represented as new, they are in effect an appropriation,relocation, and transformation, within state structures and processes, of existingorganizational strategies and agendas, and the popular legitimacy thereof. For

example, democratically elected Juntas de Vecinos (Neighbourhood Councils)were historically the means for conveying community demands to the localgovernment. In practice, Juntas were often marked by deep political divisionsand tended to relegate women to non-decision-making positions, or to excludethem altogether if they could not make child care arrangements on meeting days.During the dictatorship these councils suffered a major blow when theirleadership was appointed by the military government. Reconquering this spacefor democratic representation of community needs became a focus of politicalstruggle in many communities. In some cases these efforts led to the creation of

parallel, elected Juntas, while on rare occasions they resulted in democratizedexisting ones. The present strategy is to promote a model of local participationthat seems to bypass the pre-existing structures of Juntas.

Entre Todos articulates the activities of a vast number of professionals andtechnical experts working for municipal governments and for NGOs, as well asfor FOSIS and its regional ofces. In addition, it coordinates the activities ofsuppliers from the private sector, and last but not least, of the inhabitants frompoor areas targeted for development. 38 Central to the operation of the programmeare NGOs acting as Organismos Promotores or Ejecutores, also known asServicio de Apoyo a la Gestion Territorial or AGT (Support Services forTerritorial Management). The NGOs must compete for the right to work asAGTs in one of the areas offered for bidding by FOSIS by submitting projectproposals, along with budgets and demonstrated capacities and expertise. Toeven be considered, NGOs must rst meet fairly stringent prerequisites. Forexample, they must have a team of properly accredited professionals and expertswith experience in promotional work with poor communities. When an NGO is

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selected to participate in the Entre Todos programme, it is directed to one of theareas targeted for social assistance (known now as social investment). Inaddition, it is given 12 months to complete projects.39

In the course of these 12 months the organismos engage in skills training

work in the following ve areas: (1) self-diagnostics, prioritization of problems;(2) project proposal elaboration; (3) proposal presentation; (4) project execution;and (5) project administration. Ideally, at the end of 12 months, these skills andcapabilities will promote future forms of autogestio n (self-negotiation) forcommunity development in the targeted locality.

Beyond the position papers and the technical documents outlining EntreTodos, not to mention the preparatory work of coordinating the involvement oflocal governments, NGOs, and private business, lies a virtual army of extensionworkers in the eld, organizing people and teaching skills. It is through the

activities of the extension workers, known as promotores(as), that beneciariesof new social programmes learn a new sociality, and are encouraged to adoptcertain social behaviours and are discouraged from others. Promotores(as) aremostly young, lowermiddle-class professionals or university students, or work-ing-class activists, mostly women, who built careers working for NGOs duringthe dictatorship (though such people are nding it hard to qualify under the strictprofessional accreditation rule imposed by government agencies on NGOs).Theirs is very time-consuming work and is an illustration of the new quasi-volunteer work opportunities parallel with the wider economys exibilized

model, one might say, though sometimes with minimum health coverage whichoffer a considerable number of lowermiddle-class professionals some form ofsteady work.

Promotores(as) are responsible for the programmes on the ground. It is theirtask to act as mediators between the everyday reality of their clients and theimperatives of the programmes as textual realities. They are translators, then, onthe one hand of ofcial documents into instances of participatory learning andempowerment, and on the other of peoples realities into instances of documen-tary categories of poverty. Promotores(as) visit the sites on a weekly basis,

usually juggling more than one programme, though not covering all aspects ofit. In addition, they create a textual record of all their activities on the ground.For this purpose, they generate computer-based texts which rely on materialsfrom their interactions with their clients, with technical experts and municipallevel ofcials, and with suppliers from the business sector, as well as on theforms and other written exercises that the programme participants are asked tocomplete on a regular basis. Not only are promotores(as) required to keep acareful log of their encounters, but they must also record their impressions aboutthe degree of organization found in a particular neighbourhood. According toone promotora , when she goes to a new site she must attempt to nd out ifpeople really do participate in the community, or if leaders are deceivingthem. In addition to ascertaining whether or not legally registered communityorganizations are active, promotores(as) must also nd out if the president of theneighbourhood council has any real support, and if the neighbourhood council isactive.

Important aspects of the context in which a programme like Entre Todos is

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implemented are sifted out of what is actually happening on the ground as partof the work of partially tting people s actualities into the terms of the newdiscourse. For example, promotores(as) are aware of political sectarianism andof corruption, especially at the level of the municipal government (for example,

misuse of funds earmarked for community self-development, or deals withprivate businesses supplying construction materials) which continue to character-ize these supposedly new forms of popular organization. Moreover, often theprofessionals implementing the programme may not see the gender of theparticipants, nor think it out of the ordinary that in a group primarily composedof women, it is the few men present who get to decide, or negotiate withgovernment representatives. However, a new generation of social workers andactivists who work as promotoras, who are sensitive to gender issues, increas-ingly do notice. They report little change in the position of women in these new

programmes.These extension workers or promotores(as) arrive at their assigned sites armed

with a pedagogic kit consisting of documents, or modulos (modules) whichintroduce the key concepts of the programme, and explain skills training goalsin simple language richly illustrated with drawings. The rst pedagogic taskconsists in conveying some basic denitions like poverty, community needs,and participation. Poverty, according to the introductory module, impliesmuch effort to survive from day to day which limits people s possibilities fororganizing, assessing their situation, and prioritizing possible solutions. Living in

poverty limits the developing capacities needed to overcome it (FOSIS, 1993,p. 12). Given this reality, promotores(as) play an essential role because theyhelp the poor help themselves to organize and to understand their reality, and todiscover the causes of their problems, as well as to nd solutions for them(FOSIS, 1993, p. 11). These popular education tools are a far cry from theFreirean-inspired originals which had been developed to foster collective aware-ness (concientizacao was Freires word) among the oppressed, and to collec -tively mobilize for social change. Today, these tools are used to teach thelanguage of individualismfor example, of self-help, personal and, by exten-

sion, group responsibility and accountabilityand are an ingenious strategy forintegrating the poor into the market.40 But the pedagogic exercise does notconsist in handing people these new denitions and asking them to forget the oldones, but rather in training them to work differently in the context of anorganization. Promoters, then, are key agents in providing a discursive framingfor neo-liberal market citizenship.

In the eld, these footsoldiers of FOSIS rst create a category of people towork on with the women and men they encounter. When starting at a new site,for example, extension workers encounter not atomized individuals occupying ageographical space (as implied by the programmes description), but neighbour -hoods with varying degrees of organization.41 Julia, a dynamic working-classextension worker whose involvement in one of the Entre Todos programmes Ifollowed in July 1995, is aware that the reality of the neighbourhood rarelycoincides with the picture of anomie and dysfunction presented in the realityof the poverty of the texts she must work with. When entering a Villa in thesouthern periphery of the city, she found a variety of active associations,

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including a neighbourhood council. She also encountered a sports club (a soccerclub), a mothers centre, a group of Alcoholics Anonymous, and a catechismgroup. This Villa had approximately 3000 families living in poor conditions. Themain forms of employment the inhabitants engaged in were construction work

and (unspecied) informal activities for the men and domestic service for thewomen. Even the poorest of the poor areas have such types of associations. Therst step for someone in Julias position, then, is to create something else out ofthis lived organizational reality.42

The entry into poor neighbourhoods by NGO personnel is typically madepossible by local leaders. Julia worked very hard to convince the president of the

Junta de Vecino(Neighbourhood Council) in the Villashe was assigned to: Onedoesnt just walk in and set up shop. This particular leader was very suspiciousof anything coming from the government. Her account is revealing:

The rst reaction of neighbourhood leaders is If the governmentwants to help us, why so little money? what can you do with4 million pesos? [the xed amount for projects under the EntreTodos programme]. At that level you are dealing with leaderswho are experienced, who at the very least who know well howmuch it costs to do anything.

Nevertheless, she pressed on selling the programme as if it were a product.Once the president was persuaded by her to give the programme a chance he

called a meeting of leaders of community organizations, and of members atlarge, to allow Julia to sell the programme all over again. The programme isvery confusing to people and, thus, although time is not stipulated fordiscussing FOSIS and its many programmes, promotores(as) nd themselvesspending time explaining the nature and value of self-help programmes, es-pecially of their volunteer aspect. According to Julia: Peoples rst reaction isto believe that they have already won money, and have to be reminded thatyou havent won anything yet other than the right to work for what you want.

Promotores(as) must skilfully involve those who have never been active

before in the new community work, and at the same time convince, or simplykeep at bay, those individuals whose perceptions of the situation pose impedi-ments to the implementation of the programme. Julia and her colleagues seethemselves as purveyors of a more modern and more democratic vision of localparticipation. For them, longstanding leaders who often challenge both theirlegitimacy and their control of the process, or of the funds, are obstacles to beovercome. As Julia puts it: In many cases, the real participation level in aneighbourhood is limited to the president, secretary, and treasurer of the Juntade Vecinos. They decide without consultation. Leaders, on the other hand, whotend to be politically seasoned men, distrustful of government, and used to beingunquestioned leaders of their communities, see the situation quite differently. Forthem, the real issue is who may legitimately be entitled to decide on behalf ofthe community.

In the case of the programme in the Villa in Santiagos southern periphery,Julias description of the ideas that come up in the discussion is revealing of thetranslation effort she is involved in:

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A number suggested that the money be used to build additions totheir homes. Most live with their grown up children as allegados[a term used to refer to two or more families living in a singledwelling]. A man who was leader of one of the community

organizations proposed a programme to generate employment foryouth. He owned materials and wanted to control the funds andcreate a micro-enterprise. Others wanted to have the football eldrefurbishedits lights were no longer working. Still otherswanted to buy bicycles for every man to move to and from work.The women tended to want other things, like social centres, daycare centres, a rst aid clinic. In the end, I had to convince themthat we could not arrive at any conclusions about what thecommunity needed until we conducted a survey and established

their urgent needs.

The goals of Entre Todos are more cogent with womens aspirations anddreams. This is without doubt an indication of the implicit gender dimension ofprogrammes like this one. Women are the main actors in keeping communitiesgoing, and thus the real targets of community development programmes like

Entre Todos. The fact that Entre Todos will support a very limited range ofinitiatives is never fully disclosed to the participants. Instead, the promotoramust skilfully steer the debate away from certain proposals and toward others.

At this point many people, particularly men, lose interest in the programme andleave.43

The rst step in educating people involved in the programme is to teach themto assess the situation of poverty in their neighbourhood. Participants are taughtto conduct a house to house survey, ask questions about their neighbourspossessions, employment situation, and family size. They are also asked toproduce a list of services and businesses available in the neighbourhood. Thesedetailed surveys, promotores(as) claim, are innitely more accurate than theofcial ones they must work with, although they are only used as a pedagogic

tool. Moreover, in the context of the overall pedagogic aims of the programme,this exercise is the initial hook through which volunteers are involved in aprocess of learning to match what they know to be their communitysshortcomings with community needs that can be translated into local develop-ment projects. Based on this diagnostic, the participants are asked to proposethree projects, and it is at this point that the promotores(as) steer theirpreferences in the direction of what they already know is fundable.

The group then learns to design a projectthe diseno operativo (operativedesign) phaseon the basis of the need identied. Next, they learn to developthe interconnected steps leading to the implementation of the project: co-ordinating skills, buying materials, and keeping accounts. In cases where theneighbours do not have the skills required by a particular aspect of the project,the coordinating committee must contract out. The responsibility for raisingfunds for this purpose falls on the group overseeing the project, and othervolunteers they manage to recruit. Thus, in addition to learning skills related tothe implementation and administration of the project, the coordinating committee

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gets to rehearse the very old practice of rustling up funds from neighbours,typically by cooking and selling food, organizing parties and rafes.

State ritual also has a place in the FOSIS scheme. In the case of the Villa inSantiagos southern periphery, the Intendente handed over a cheque to the

coordinating committee for the project they had (presumably) proposed in apublic ceremony attended by the neighbourhood. This, no doubt, helps legitimatethe presence of FOSIS in the neighbourhood, and adds to the demonstrationeffect of the programme. What happens once the funds are awarded to a selectedproject? Typically, while the organizational activities may be in place, problemsarise in relation to the work commitment people have made. Volunteers,especially men, nd it difcult to keep their promise to donate their labour oneday per week, on the weekend. After all, these are not projects of their choice,and they have typically been recruited by neighbours, wives, and relatives. Given

that most of them work far away from the neighbourhood for the remainder ofthe week, this extra volunteer work amounts to a great sacrice. Invariably, theircommitment wanes over time.44

Ultimately, then, without explicitly targeting women, the programme dependson womens community-based and personal skills, not to mention their inordi -nate capacity to volunteer their efforts. Women with young children in poorcommunities tend not to be gainfully employed outside their neighbourhoods,and are more willing to volunteer their time for the ongoing work demanded bythe programme. They often end up being the backbone of the coordinating

bodieseven in cases where, as is very common, they do the work and thehandful of men also involved end up making the decisionsand interacting withexperts and local government representatives. 45 The gender of the humanresources mobilized by programmes such as Entre Todos is not an explicitconcern for FOSIS or for the organismos promotores, nor are its possibleimplications. In effect, unless the programmes are directed specically atwomen, for example, those aimed at women heads of households, the concreteexperiences of women and men recruited for projects of self-development aredivested of their particularity and transformed into textual accounts of poverty,

populated by neighbours or poor people .

Conclusions

Critics of recent trends in Latin America that foster neo-liberal modernizationand social democracy have begun to explore the long-term implications of theprofound transformations in economic, social, and political practices, as well asin those institutional arrangements associated with the neo-liberal reforms (forexample, Smith et al., 1994; Smith and Korzeniewicz, 1997).46 This articleshares their interest in the long duree (though not their commitment to socialdemocracy), that is, on the long-term implications of these transformations. Ithas done so by drawing attention to the politicalcultural dimension of institu-tional change, and, more specically, to its implications for the recongurationof power relations between subjects and the state.47

In this essay I have suggested that the social citizenship associated withthe agencies and practices of welfare states, eloquently and problematically

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theorized by T.H. Marshall, is giving way to a new form, market citizenship. Ihave explored this new form by examining the on-the-ground practices throughwhich the agencies of the neo-liberal state in Chile are redening the relationbetween individuals and the state. I have shown that innovative social pro-

grammes such as Entre Todos are not really new, or a complete break with thepast, but are a complex historicalcultural realignment of social practices whichhave an effect on social relations and social identities. The effectiveness of suchprogrammes, then, lies in their capacity for reorganizing the practices, dis-courses, and experiences, of vast groups of individuals and collectivities.

Post-independence Latin America as a whole, not only Chile, has historicallybeen shaped in dialectical relation with outside forces. At the close of themillennium, the effects of intensied movements and accumulation of capital, ofrapid technological innovation, and of the spread of ideologies of global

restructuring across national boundaries, constitute powerful external forcesimpinging on the region. In this context, national states are not emasculatedbystanders, however, but are the architects of renewed projects of modernizationand of national belonging, or citizenship, and hence are at the centre of thecultural articulations associated with these changes as they unfold in speciclocal contexts. 48 Market citizenship, then, is a transnational phenomenon, thoughit is localized in ways that respond to the specic, historical and local characterof cultural patterns in each country. In Chile, for example, market citizenshiparticulates and mediates a tradition of popular activism that stretches back to the

early 1960s, including strong womens organizational experiences and com-munity work, in addition to the practices and discourses of popular participationwhich came to be central in the socialist government of Salvador Allende, andwhich were preserved and developed further in research institutes and NGOsfunded from abroad during the dictatorship.

Chile is in many ways an exception to the rule in Latin America. For example,the economy was successfully restructured under Pinochets iron st, withoutdebilitating resistance from the bourgeoisie, and without a chance of oppositionon the part of organized labour. In most cases in Latin American countries,

however, restructuring has been a laborious process, marked not only byrepression but also by conict, and compromises with powerful social sectors.This is particularly evident in places like Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina, oncestrong examples of KeynsianFordist-inspired modernization. Despite theseimportant differences, there is a shared commitment among the elites throughoutthe region to international competitiveness, and to neo-liberal modernization, inthe context of electoral regimes. Moreover, the new agenda of economic andpolitical modernization is strongly supported by international experts and funds,through programmes promoting institutional reform (also known as goodgovernance), the strengthening of civil society, not to mention the integrationof the poor majority into development through participatory programmes.49

The radical transformations in Chile suggest that in addition to analysing thesuccesses or failures of neo-liberal modernization in dismantling the institutionsof the regions older development model, or in restructuring its economies andclass structures, we also need to consider the culturalpolitical impact of thesechanges. Cultural modernization, that is, the redenition of social relations and

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social identities, is potentially the most revolutionary aspect of the transforma-tions afoot in the region. I would suggest that a pressing question for researchin the new millennium is: what is the hegemonic potential and what are thehegemonic achievements of neo-liberal modernization? 50 That is, to what extent

will the new market terms of belonging in the national community, whichincreasingly permeate private and public actions and discourse, change the verymaterial and cultural contexts in which peoples lives and struggles are framed?

Acknowledgements

This paper was originally written for the workshop State, Colony, Empire: AWorkshop on State Formation in Comparative Historical & Cultural Perspectivesat St. Peters College, Oxford, England, March 1997. A short version was alsopresented at the XX International Congress of the Latin American StudiesAssociation, Guadalajara, Mexico, 1997. I want to acknowledge the CanadianInternational Development Research Centre for funds that made the bulk of theresearch for this article possible, and the Social Sciences and HumanitiesResearch Council of Canada, as well as the University of Western Ontario foradditional funding. I thank Marisa Weinstein for facilitating my research inSantiago and Leonora Reyes for her research assistance there. Michael Keating,Carol Agocs, Philip Corrigan, and Ted Schrecker made useful suggestions on

earlier drafts. I am grateful to Gavin Smith, Linzi Manicom, and MalcolmBlincow, as well as to the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their detailedcomments.

Notes

1. I deliberately use the term market to refer to the neo-liberal citizenship I discuss in this article, to

highlight the dimensions of agency and process involved. I consider the alternative marketized, suggested

to me on several occasions, problematic precisely because it conveys the sense of a political identity

already xed, that is, imposed on subjects as an already present hegemonic achievement. In the text I use

marketized in those places where I refer specically to policy discourse as text. In my reference to the

liberal norms of the marketplace as forming a bedrock for new forms of political identities I echo C.B.

Macphersons brilliant study The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (1962). He traced the

origins of capitalism as cultural form.

2. For a discussion of Foucaults notion of governmentality, see Foucault (1991). For applications of this type

of analysis see, for example, Burchell et al. (1991) and Barry et al. (1996).

3. In using the notion of hegemonic project I rely on William Roseberrys useful distinction between

projects and achievements, as well as on his reminder that hegemony, in Gramscis sense, is not about

constructing a shared ideology but a common material and meaningful framework for living through,

talking about, and acting upon social orders characterized by domination (1994, p. 361). In Latin America,

the various modernization projects have not succeeded in saturating the social as it is lived, therebybecoming the cultural system taken for granted. About these successive hegemonic projects much needs

to be said, though, until recently, Latin Americanists have been inclined to say little (for an exception, see

Rubin, 1997; Joseph and Nugent, 1994).

4. Social policy discourse and, indeed, all discourses on governmentality are masculine in the sense

highlighted by feminist critiques; namely, they take men as the norm, and mens interests as the only

ones that exist. In fact, as Pringle and Watson suggest, Foucaults very notion of governmentality was

originally conceived on the model of (a fathers) management of a family, and family remains an important

instrument of government (Pringle and Watson, 1992, p. 56).

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5. Nancy Fraser offers a suggestive theoretical reection of this point in her essay Women, welfare, and the

politics of need interpretation (1989).

6. This is an argument developed compellingly for the history of US social policy by Theda Skocpol in her

study, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers (1992). The Latin American case still awaits such a thorough

telling. Nevertheless, one obtains important clues of womens roles in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, in

Lavrin (1995) and Miller (1991).7. See DeShazo (1983), Salazar (1985, 1990), Rosenblatt (1996), Hutchison (1995), and Klubock (1993) for

the gendered, deeply contested, violent context of the rise of the discourse and practice of social policy

in Chile. For an account of the intellectual and political underpinnings of the so-called solutions to Chiles

social question, see Morris (1966) and Drake (1978). For accounts of the origins and evolution of social

policy, see Arellano (1988, 1985), Vergara (1990), and Graham (1994).

8. Many women who did not t the norm of salaried work or family arrangements stipulated by the law were

neglected by the existing social security schemes. On the other hand, women did benet from nearly

universal coverage in health care, and, those with children, from universal primary education. Also, the

Labour Code of 1931 stipulated protective measures which beneted working mothers (Montecinos, 1994,

1998).

9. For recent interdisciplinary contributions to the debate, see, for example, Jelin (1996), Schild (1998a), andSocial Politics (1998). Reference to citizenship is also found in conventional political science discussions

of Latin American democratization, for example, in the work of Przeworski et al. (1995), ODonnell

(1994), and the much cited text, ODonnell et al. (1986).

10. Marshall dened class as not merely economic groups but as status groups. Class inequalities were

tolerable, he believed, but class as a mechanism for creating a culture of privilege was directly responsible

for class conict. See Marshall (1938, p. 97).

11. I am grateful to Philip Corrigan (1990) for drawing my attention to this important piece.

12. This is not to suggest that all feminist discussions of citizenship dismiss Marshall. Some, for example, the

inuential work of Scandinavian feminist Helga Hernes, use Marshalls notion of social citizenship to

theorize women and the welfare state. More recently, Wendy Sarvasy proposes a reconceptualization ofsocial citizenship beyond Marshall from a feminist perspective (Sarvasy, 1997).

13. It is common knowledge, of course, that while the armed forces brought these changes into place through

brutal forceits members jailed, tortured, exiled, disappeared, and killed civilians with impunitythe

ideological watershed that this period represents must be credited to the group of Chicago-trained

free-market economists known in Chile as the Chicago Boys. This group offered the Junta the blueprint

of policy reform. For a discussion of these economists involvement in the early days of the dictatorship,

see Collins and Lear (1985) and Valdes (1989). And, for a description of the process through which the

500-page proposal to reform t he economy reached the Junta, see Constable and Valenzuela (1991). The

literature outlining the errors committed by this group of orthodox reformers, and the economic crisis of

19811983 precipitated by their policies, is vast. See, for example, Edwards and Edwards (1987); Foxley

(1983); and Ffrench-Davis (1983).

14. The details of this economic strategy have been the subject of a substantial critical literature. See, for

example, Foxleys text cited earlier. Also, Martnez and Daz (1996) and Petras and Leiva (1994).

15. Make-work programmes designed to alleviate the impact of massive unemployment were one form social

spending took. Another form was nutritional benets for pregnant and lactating women and children under

the age of six. See Vergara (1994) and Raczynski and Oyarzo (1981) for a critical discussion of these

social programmes.

16. Sheltered by the regressive labour code which remains fundamentally unchanged after nearly a decade of

electoral democracy, rms pursue a policy of systematic subcontracting of operations which previously

were carried out with a complement of (mostly male) workers employed on a full-time basis.

17. The economic crisis of 19811983 led the military to pursue a more pragmatic neo-liberal strategy withthe support of t he IMF and the World Bank. This strategy paved the way to unprecedented levels of

growth, 7% annually on average, and is celebrated as the economic miracle.

18. Women make up the bulk of those employed in the service sector working as receptionists, saleswomen,

telephone operators, and computer operators. Studies show that womens work in Chile is still concen-

trated in the traditionally female areas of servicesdomestic, secretarial, sales, and so onwith only some

slight variation in the last 10 years (Marquez and Schkolnik, 1997). On this topic, see also Munoz (1988)

and FLACSO (1994).

19. Interview with Miriam Ortega (December 1997), director of Centro Ana Clara, an NGO operating on a

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and civil servants at US institutions, or in Chile itself in exchange programmes that brought US scholars

to local universities (Lerdau and Mesmer, 1997). The Ford and Rockefeller foundations poured money into

exchange programmes, as did US universities such as Chicago. For a discussion of intellectuals and

professionals during that period, see Puryear (1994). One needs to ask to what extent these policies,

premised on a KeynesianFordist model of economic development, were a response to the fear of a

potential domino effect of the Cuban revolution in the Latin American region.33. See Schild (1998b, 1995) for further elaboration of this point.

34. The originalFicha CASwas replaced by Ficha CAS2 (though everyone continues to refer to it by its old

name) and it aims to classify people, and by extension communities, as poor, not poor, and indigents.

It consists of a survey that measures housing conditions (quality of the unit, access to basic infrastructure)

and the condition of families (for example, the age, educational level, occupation, kinship relations, and

incomes of members of a family unit). The personnel who conduct the survey do not assign points; this

task belongs to another level of government, the Intendencia. Municipal governments, through a person

in charge of estraticacion (stratication), emphasize one or the other dimension for their own social

assistance purposes. For example, those classied as indigents become eligible for health subsidies, but not

for housing subsidies (interview with Bernarda, a social worker with the Catholic charity, Hogar de Cristo,

December 1997).35. See Raczynski (1994) for a sympathetic, technical evaluation of FOSISs aims, achievements, and

shortcomings. For a more comprehensive political critique of this initiative and of its broader implications,

see Petras and Leiva (1994) and Vergara (1994).

36. Information on these projects, including funds available, and requirements for accessing them, is contained

in the comprehensive guide published by Fundacion Andes (1995). The members of the NGO acting as

Organismo Promotor I interviewed in December 1997 indicated that this guide has become a bible for

NGOs struggling to survive in the new competitive funding arena.

37. For this purpose I rely extensively on interviews with three promotoras working in the NGOs who turned

organismo promotorparticularly the very detailed account provided by Julia of her own workwhose

travails and transformations I have followed since 1986. I also rely on interviews and informalconversations with local residents, and with community and political activists in La Pintana, San Ramon,

and La Granja, which I have gathered in the course of doing eldwork there since 1986. I have not

engaged in representative sampling because the object of my investigations has been to understand the

routine work people engage in, and their ways of speaking about this work. Currently, this interest

extends to the interactions, again understood as routine, everyday practices, between people located at

different levels of government and within local communities.

38. This section relies extensively on interviews conducted in July 1995 with representatives from FOSIS, both

at the national and regional ofce in Santiago, as well as an in-depth interviews with the director and

promotoras of one NGO that had become an executor of FOSIS programmes.

39. Originally the timeframe for completion of projects was 10 months, but it proved to be unrealistic. See

Raczynski (1995) for an assessment of the limitations posed on the programmes by this timeframe. The

new timeframe is still considered to be unrealistic by those involved in the actual work of executing

projects, revealing at heart the conict existing between the expectations of government agencies and

NGOs recruited to execute programmes. In my interviews during 1995 and 1997 with NGO representatives

turned executors of social programmes, I heard repeatedly that the government is interested in measuring

output, while NGOs are committed to projects as processes leading to individual and group change.

40. Originally, in the late 1950s, popular education was a working-class initiative in Chile. It was subsequently

professionalized. CIDE, the Centre for Educational Investigations, specialized in developing popular

education materials during the dictatorship and, in some sense, kept the Freirian tradition alive. Today, it

is the major provider of popular education kits to government agencies, and any other private or public

organization seeking to reach working-class people. CIDE sells its expertise for a price (too hefty a price,NGOs operating on a shoe string complain) and is, thus, among the successful survivors of the NGO

restructuring.

41. It would seem that the closer the individuals own awareness of the living conditions of their potential

clients, the greater the dissonance for them.

42. I nd Dorothy Smiths point about the discursive creation of reality in organizational settings very relevant

here. She has called strategies like the one followed by the promotora working in Santiagos southern

periphery, the social organization of facticity. In her view, facticity is an organization of practices

accomplishing as a virtual reality what is or what actually happened or some other statement of what

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Veronica Schild

is the case (Smith, 1990, pp. 7071). Power, in this context, according to Smith, is always a mobilization

of peoples concerted activities. If facticity, if objective knowledge, is a form of power, it arises in the

distinctive concerting of peoples activities that breaks knowledge from the active experiencing of

subjects (1990, pp. 7980).

43. This response on the part of men is suggestive. The Entre Todos programme promotes participatory

capacities, but is vague about how these capacities will be matched to real job possibilities. Ultimately,there is a gendered dimension at work here: the programme ostensibly addresses community self-develop-

ment in gender-neutral terms, yet historically, all the way back to the i nitiatives of the Popular Unity

period, working for the improvement of the neighbourhood (though not making the key decisions) has

traditionally been part of poor and working-class womens responsibilities.

44. The difculties in getting the work done are illustrated by a case which has by now acquired the status

of a communal anecdote among those involved with FOSIS projects. One targeted neighbourhood in

Puente Alto, a semi-rural area on the southern outskirts of Santiago, was granted a project to pave streets.

The materials and technical expertise were to be provided by the municipal government and FOSIS, and

the labour by the residents. The project took forever to complete. The residents were reluctant to do the

hard work of digging and levelling the ground after spending the entire week working in nearby farms.

To get the job done the municipal representative resorted to a ruse. He sent an ofcial letter to eachhousehold informing them that if the streets were not paved by a specied date, they would be nancially

responsible for nishing the job. Faced with this option, the residents came out in droves on the weekend

to build the roads. It just so happened that representatives from FOSISs main ofce were touring the site.

This scam proved to be something of an embarrassment for FOSIS ideologues, though also a great source

of amusement for some of the NGO personnel involved in the programme.

45. In this discussion of peoples involvement with the programme I am focusing on the attempted

transformation of social relations and social identities by agents of the state. The degree to which those

who are the objects of these transformations are actually changed along gender lines, as well as unintended

deections of the projects intended aims, are matters which require further research. Having said this,

however, this discussion suggests that older men in the Villa had an instrumental relation to the

programme, while the relation of women to the programme seems unclear. Are they being instrumentalin their pursuit of those community projects that they value? Are they being drawn into the parameters of

the discourse as they do this? In other research (Schild, 1998a,b) I have indicated that in some instances

women do buy into the new language of empowerment and begin to use it.

46. Some scholars, for example, have turned to Karl Polanyis magisterial study of the rise and eventual

demise of an earlier period of unfettered capitalism, The Great Transformation, to nd direction. See, for

example, Smith and Korzeniewicz (1997).

47. My reference to power here owes more to Dorothy Smiths embedded approach than to Foucaults. With

her, I conceive of power as arising as peoples actual activities are coordinated to give the multiplied

effects of cooperation (Smith, 1990, p. 70).

48. This goes against the grain of the fashionable argument that nation-states have been

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