Professor Joel Stillerman

I am a qualitative sociologist specializing in Latin America. Most of my scholarship focuses on Chile. My first project examined working class mobilization under distinct political regimes in Chile, revealing the surprising resilience of labor protest under military rule (1973-1990) as well as how space, place, and scale affect strikes. This article explores these themes:

 Stillerman, Joel. 2017. “Explaining Strike Outcomes in Chile: Structural Power, Associational Power, and Spatial Strategies.” Latin American Politics and Society. 59, 1 (Spring): 96-118.

I have also edited several comparative volumes on work and unions in Latin America and the Global South.

A second project explores how retail development in Santiago, Chile has influenced the character of public space and generated conflicts over the control of urban spaces. This article examines these issues:

Stillerman, Joel and Rodrigo Salcedo. 2012. “Transposing the Urban to the Mall: Routes, Relationships and Resistance in two Santiago, Chile Shopping Centers.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 41, 3: 309–336.

The second project provided the groundwork for my first book, which provides an overview of the field of consumption studies with a focus on the Global South, inequalities (based on class, gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, and age), and consumer citizenship:

Stillerman, Joel. 2015. The Sociology of Consumption: A Global Approach. Cambridge, UK: Polity Books.

As an IAS visiting fellow, I will give a presentation on my book, Identity Investments: Middle-class Responses to Precarious Privilege in Neoliberal Chile (Stanford University Press, 2023). The book delves into an under-explored theme in Bourdieusian work that has largely focused on education, consumption, and housing. By examining the influence of political and moral values on middle class market practices, the book moves beyond widely observed phenomena of opportunity hoarding and status competition. Identity investments describes how moral frameworks influence middle-class people’s market choices in fields like education, housing, and leisure. Some middle class groups adhere to identity investments that attenuate purely instrumental market behaviors. Precarious privilege describes middle class families’ relative comfort alongside their fragile hold on jobs. I find that precarious privilege leads middle class adults to construct symbolic boundaries with others in line with their identity investments. I explore these two phenomena in the fields of employment, housing, school choice, home decoration, and leisure, and consider their implications for Chile’s recent political changes.

I will also lead a workshop, entitled, “Middle Classes and Political Polarization in Contemporary Chile.” I will explore a new project for which I will conduct research in Chile next fall supported by a Fulbright Award. I will discuss the surprising ascent of right-wing populist politician José Antonio Kast amidst Chile’s 2019 progressive social protests that culminated in efforts to draft a new constitution. Preliminary evidence suggests affluent and poor voters tend to support Kast and his party, but I am interested in how his harsh views on crime, immigration and indigenous rights may influence other parties’ platforms and middle class political attitudes. I will conduct qualitative fieldwork in three Santiago, Chile communities to understand voters’ subjective attitudes in an academic field that mainly relies on survey data, voting results, political speeches, and party documents.