Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Date of Degree
9-2026
Document Type
Doctoral Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Program
Anthropology
Advisor
Marc Edelman
Committee Members
Melissa Checker
Naomi Schiller
Elan Abrell
Subject Categories
Social and Cultural Anthropology
Keywords
Social movements, estallido social, animals, multispecies ethnography, constitutional reform, animal liberation.
Abstract
This study draws on three years of ethnographic research in Santiago, Chile, to examine how nonhuman animals participate in political struggles and how animalistas—activists organizing around animal issues—contest speciesism. In focusing on the intersections of animal exploitation, state violence, and social movements, I explore how animals are co-constitutive of political life. My overarching claim is that political struggles in Chile are shaped by multispecies dynamics, which I demonstrate through four sites: industrial animal production, the Chilean rodeo, the 2019 estallido social (social outburst), and the constitutional conventions.
In industrial animal production, activists use undercover investigations, documentary screenings, open rescues, and slaughterhouse vigils to expose the deliberate concealment of violence against farmed animals. The rodeo, a practice emerging from the domination of Chile’s landed elite, is a spectacle where hierarchies of species, class, and nation are ritualized and defended. Activists respond with legal challenges, civil disobedience, and economic sabotage against rodeo corrals. During the estallido social, street dogs fought alongside protesters on the frontline and became symbols of resistance. At the same time, the state weaponized horses for crowd control and subjected both horses and street dogs to the same forms of repression used against people. In the constitutional convention, activists mobilized two competing popular initiatives—No Son Muebles and Sujetos No Objetos—to challenge animals’ legal status as “movable property” and recognize them as subjects of rights. What emerges is a politics that refuses the human-animal divide, insisting instead on solidarity across species in a struggle for a more just world.
Recommended Citation
Parme, Lindsay, "Subjects of Resistance: Multispecies Political Struggles in Chile" (2026). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/6845
