This project proposes an ethnographic approach for investigating neoliberal ideology, by focusing in the everyday life of those who experience it in first hand. One of the principles of our proposal is the concept of “aspiration”, which we believe is understood and experienced in diverse manners given by the different positions people occupy on the social structure. We suggest that in the context of neoliberal Chile, the different agents offer critics to the system, as well as they define themselves through it in their everyday lives, and that aspiration plays a crucial role within this ways of being and self-making.

We intend, as a collective of researchers, to follow aspiration as a concept through four different lines of inquiry, each one posing its own questions and field sites for investigation. All of them will be guided by an ethnographic approach in their attempts to understand aspiration and self-making of peoples within our neoliberal context. This approach consists of a dense and deep mode of questioning social practices and groups. In this case, we will follow in a multi-sited manner all four topics – gender and family, housing and activism, entrepreneurship and different understandings of science and spirituality – through participating on the every day life and sharing with the people related to them in a neoliberal and chilean context.