This dissertation investigates the emergence and impact of social movements in Chile since the reinstatement of democracy in 1990. Seeking to make an important contribution to the understanding of the reconstruction of collective action in post-transition Chile, I focus on two cases which have been particularly successful in questioning the benefits of market-friendly policies introduced by the military regime (1973-1989) and continued to a great extent by the Concertación governments (1990-2010). The first case is the 2006 Pingüino movement, named after the secondary school students’ penguin-like black and white school uniforms, which forced a substantial discussion on the education system’s segregating effects and its neoliberal underpinnings. The second case is the 2007 Contratista movement, composed of subcontracted workers of CODELCO – Chile’s main state-owned copper-extracting company. The Contratistas repoliticised a long-dormant debate on labour issues and revitalised a trade union movement which had been in decline in previous decades. I draw on the Contentious Politics approach, which stresses social movements’ interaction with the institutional terrain, and explain the emergence of the Pingüinos and Contratistas as the result of three distinct but intertwined processes: the opening up of the structure of political opportunities involved in the rise of President Bachelet; the deeply felt discontent with the education and labour reforms introduced by the military regime and kept largely intact by the Concertación governments; and the movements’ adoption of non-hierarchical organisational forms as a way of reconstructing collective action ‘from below’. In terms of political impact, I show that both the students and the contract workers were successful in introducing issues onto the public agenda that were not there before the emergence of the movements. The extent to which this was translated into bills that reflected the concerns of the movements, however, depended on their capacity to continue to exert pressure on the government and to forge political alliances. In this way, I argue that the impact of the movements was indirect and followed a two-stage process through which first the Pingüinos and Contratistas influenced aspects of their external environment, namely, public opinion and political alliances, and then the latter influenced policy. Overall, my research shows the links between processes at the micro-level (the development of organisational resources and grievance interpretation) and their subsequent impact at the macro-level (agenda-setting and policy impact) – a development that has undoubtedly acquired greater relevance and analytical urgency since the wide range of protests that have taken place around the world since 2011.

On propose une sociogenèse de la nébuleuse idéologique « animaliste », une histoire sociale de l’idée de représentation politique des bêtes au Royaume-Uni et en France depuis la seconde moitié du 18ème siècle jusqu’à la période contemporaine. Le point de départ de l’étude réside en un constat, à savoir l’existence de rapports et de représentations différenciés à l’animal de chaque côté de la Manche. Ces rapports et représentations s’objectivent dans le niveau de développement des mobilisations collectives pour la libération et le droit des animaux, puissant au Royaume-Uni, faible en France. Il s’agit ici de rendre compte des logiques sociales de production, diffusion, réception et réappropriation, d’une configuration nationale à l’autre, des acceptions successives de l’idée de porte-parolat des bêtes. L’examen des trajectoires, propriétés et positions des agents et des groupes qui se sont saisis de cette idéologie, articulé à l’analyse interne de leurs prises de position, met au jour les enjeux des luttes engagées autour de la prise de parole au nom de l’animal, la prescription des interactions appropriées entre les hommes et les bêtes permettant aux producteurs de l’idée d’affirmer, par analogies, une définition légitime du monde social . En s’attachant à suivre les processus pluriels à l’aune desquels est structurée la nébuleuse, on peut ainsi expliquer les modalités de naturalisation ou non de l’idée de porte-parolat des bêtes en France et au Royaume-Uni et rendre compte des mécanismes de l’universalisation des idéologies au sein des configurations nationales. / We propose a sociogenesis of the “animalist” ideology, a social history of the idea of political representation of animals in the United Kingdom and France since the second half of the 18th century to the contemporary period. The starting point of the study is a finding, namely the existence of differentiated reports and representations of animals on each side of the Channel. These reports and representations are objectified in the level of development of collective movements for liberation and animal rights, strong in the UK, low in France. This is to account for the social logic of production, distribution, reception and reappropriation, from a national setting to another, of the successive meanings of the idea of beasts spokesperson's. The examination of trajectories, properties and positions of agents and groups that have taken up this ideology, articulated to the internal analysis of their positions, uncovers the issues of struggles waged around the speaking on behalf of the animal, the prescription of appropriate interactions between man and beast allowing producers of the idea to assert, by analogy, a legitimate definition of the social world. Endeavoring to follow the plural processes by which the ideological nebula is structured, one can thus explain the naturalization procedures or not the idea of beasts spokesperson's in France and the UK and report mechanisms of universalisation of ideologies in national configurations.