María-Luisa MéndezPontifical Catholic University of Chile | UC · Instituto de Estudios Urbanos
María-Luisa Méndez
Professor
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51
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Introduction
Prof. María-Luisa Méndez is the Director of the Center for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies, www.coes.cl. Her research focuses in Urban Sociology and Social Stratification, more specifically, 1) upper middle class social reproduction and 2) urban conflict and cohesion and their relation with socio-spatial inequalities. She combines qualitative and quantitative data with georeferenced analysis. She is Associate Professor at the Institute of Urban and Territorial Studies, estudiosurbanos.uc.cl
Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (51)
This study examines how perceived residential reputations – that is, how people think non-residents assess the reputation of their neighbourhood – affect neighbourhood attachment, including residents’ sense of belonging, local civic membership, social relationships and compliance with social rules and norms in the neighbourhood. We focus on Santiag...
This article examine the phenomenon of vandalization, re-signification and appropiation of public monuments after the social outbreak of October 2019 in different chilean cities. Following the global and local discussions based upon the review of the urban fallism concept, we propose a caracterization of the current heritage debate in Chile that si...
El presente artículo examina el fenómeno de vandalización, resignificación y apropiación de monumentos públicos acontecido tras el contexto del estallido social de octubre de 2019 y su expresión en las ciudades chilenas. Recogiendo las discusiones, globales y locales, basadas en la revisión del concepto de urban fallism, se propone una caracterizac...
Este artículo se titula “fragmentación ideológica de la elite en Chile”. Ofrece resultados de una investigación sobre los estratos más privilegiados de la sociedad chilena compuestos por empresarios, directivos y profesionales. En base a literatura sociológica y politológica, se indaga sobre la división política de las clases altas y medias altas....
Este artículo analiza las narrativas del contra movimiento que surgió en Chile a raíz del estallido social de octubre de 2019 y del posterior plebiscito por una nueva constitución. Se pone el foco en aquellos activistas primo manifestantes, es decir, en quienes no tenían una trayectoria de militancia o activismo político previo. El artículo argumen...
The material conditions of the city offer evidence of socio-territorial segregation. When sanitary measures to control the spread of COVID-19 were applied, those conditions made the extent of segregation in Santiago evident. Thus, the city, neighborhood, and housing scales open possible points of analysis to better understand the care crisis at the...
Este documento aborda la pregunta por la vulnerabilidad de las clases medias en Chile, interrogante que cobró relevancia en el marco de la doble crisis abierta por el estallido social de octubre de 2019 y la pandemia de COVID-19 desde 2020. En el informe analizamos la fragilidad de las clases medias desde la noción de cohesión social, es decir de q...
This report is about middle classes in Chile in the recent times of crisis, connected significantly with the social outburst of 2019. It offers very generous evident about income, level of debts, political identification and behaviour, amongst others. The results are a product of a combination of sociological and economics approaches.
This study examines how perceptions of residential reputation and stigma vary according to differences in social class and spatial structures. The focus of our inquiry is the city of Santiago, Chile – a highly segregated city in Latin America. We suggest that residential stigma is the focus of a larger assemblage of material and non-material margin...
Este documento presenta resultados preliminares del Proyecto ANID COVID 0584 “Vivienda, barrio y ciudad en el control de epidemias. Consideraciones sociales y urbanas para la formulación de políticas públicas de aislamiento y de distanciamiento físico en Chile”, financiado a través del Concurso para la Asignación Rápida de Recursos para Proyectos d...
Contrary to the idea that neighbourhood cohesion is something that inherently benefits the poor or counterbalances the forces of social exclusion, in this article we argue that it can also function as a mechanism of cumulative advantage. In order to explore this proposal, we offer a definition and key dimensions of neighbourhood cohesion based on t...
In this article, we study the determinants of feelings of insecurity and fear of crime in Santiago, Chile. We propose an integrative theoretical approach around the concept of “well-being”, which allows us to rescue both the objective and subjective dimensions exposed in the literature, as well as the different contexts analyzed: individual and geo...
La elección de colegio ha sido identificada como un momento clave en el proceso de reproducción social de la clase media alta. En Chile, en las últimas décadas, el modelo escolar ha dependido en su mayor parte, de lo que se entiende como la elección del colegio por parte de las familias. Este modelo de política pública ha convivido con la selección...
This chapter provides evidence of a connection between parents’ cultural engagement during their childhoods and the kind of involvement they favor for their own children. Additionally, we demonstrate and describe a neat interrelation between processes of cultural reproduction and social mobility into the higher ranks of society. In other words, we...
This chapter demonstrates that expectations from residential and school choices are closely interrelated: those who have high expectations in one domain will have high expectations in the other. Over 40% of our upper middle class respondents report high expectations in areas such as educational and professional success and good and adequate environ...
This chapter aims to present a comprehensive understanding of upper middle class (political) cultural repertoires in relation to a variety of topics of public interest, such as inequality, globalization, and meritocracy. Our purpose is to add another layer to the already complex depiction of a fragmented upper middle class, which we have unveiled t...
This chapter brings together the main findings from each chapter, to provide evidence that shows that social mobility and residential mobility are very significantly related, but that these two types of mobility are also associated with other components of everyday life that define upper middle class expectations, parenting practices, cultural repe...
This chapter examines the ways in which Santiago’s barrio alto has grown over the past decades, leading to high levels of social segregation of the most privileged. The offer of housing for the upper middle classes, and upward occupational mobility, has raised expectations of belonging to this class. Social and spatial mobility into and within the...
In the contemporary context of increasing inequality and various forms of segregation, this volume analyzes the transition to neoliberal politics in Santiago de Chile. Using an innovative methodological approach that combines georeferenced data and multi-stage cluster analysis, Méndez and Gayo study the old and new mechanisms of social reproduction...
This paper addresses the complex relationship between social inequality and urban conflict by offering a systematic and comprehensive approach to the articulation between macro structural inequality (density, segregation, concentration of high-income), meso level symbolic inequality (territorial stigma) and micro level experiences of conflict and p...
A critical analysis of two conflicts associated with the displacement resulting from gentrification in Santiago, Chile, reveals that this displacement affects both the urban poor and the middle classes and that the common adversary is the real estate sector. The subjective experience of the groups involved can be understood in terms of the concept...
Tertiarization, or the shift to service economies with an increasing prevalence of non-manual occupations, has been identified as a central phenomenon in contemporary societies. With the purported numerical and political decline of traditional working-class sectors, the middle class has come to be seen in recent decades as the dominant one. This un...
Addressing a pragmatic sociology perspective, this article presents the results of a study carried out in Chile in a context characterized by growing public debate about social inequalities and increasing criticisms from ordinary people. Using a methodology based on a classificatory card game, we seek to understand how people describe society, its...
A critical analysis of two conflicts associated with the displacement resulting from
gentrification in Santiago, Chile, reveals that this displacement affects both the urban
poor and the middle classes and that the common adversary is the real estate sector. The
subjective experience of the groups involved can be understood in terms of the concept...
Addressing a pragmatic sociology perspective, this article presents the results of a study carried out in Chile in a context characterized by growing public debate about social inequalities and increasing criticisms from ordinary people. Using a methodology based on a classificatory card game, we seek to understand how people describe society, its...
Resumen Este artículo muestra el cambio en la estructura social en Chile durante las últimas cuatro décadas, y caracteriza, por un lado, la pérdida de eficacia de las políticas públicas destinadas a mejorar las oportunidades de vida dada la menor movilidad social en el seno de los sectores populares y las clases medias y, por otro, el aumen-to de l...
The sociological literature about the (upper) middle class, developed during the second half of the Twentieth century, has allowed us to have a detailed knowledge about its political and cultural behavior, particularly for the cases of Western Europe and the United States. From this line of work, we can draw two important ideas which have contribut...
The sociological literature about the (upper) middle class, developed during the second half of the Twentieth century, has allowed us to have a detailed knowledge about its political and cultural behavior, particularly for the cases of Western Europe and the United States. From this line of work, we can draw two important ideas which have contribut...
In this article, with qualitative evidence from Chilean middleclasses, we discuss the pessimistic views of Richard Sennett about the future of thepublic space. Based on our recent research, we propose three interpretative keys -the intermittent transition from public to private, the tensions generated betweenthem and finally the demand for authenti...
During the last decade, studying the patterns of taste and cultural participation has been increasingly important in academic debates. Pierre Bourdieus work has been acknowledged as a key reference in the area. In this article we show results of an empirical research that support two of the most significant ideas of this intellectual: the homology...
This paper explores in-depth interviews on aspects of middle class identity in a neoliberal age, taking the case of Chile's rapid and stark transition to a neoliberal economic model which was imposed by a dictatorship but later reproduced during democracy.1 The paper reveals that there are no challenges to middle class identities (eg from the worki...
This paper explores in-depth interviews on aspects of middle class identity in a neoliberal age, taking the case of Chile's rapid and stark transition to a neoliberal economic model which was imposed by a dictatorship but later reproduced during democracy. 1 The paper reveals that there are no challenges to middle class identities (e.g. from the wo...
