Contesting Legitimacy in Chile

“Politicians and activists are constantly making reference to family. They use family as a metaphor for political community. They tell us how they will help families. They justify their political actions by referring to their own familial roles. Using Chile as a case study, Gwynn Thomas explains how and why family rhetoric enters politics. Thomas's book spans the left and right of the political spectrum over a twenty-year period, providing a comprehensive and accessible account of gender and Chilean politics.” —Karin Rosemblatt, University of Maryland

“Gwynn Thomas’s book offers an engaging and innovative discussion of two important decades in Chilean political history. Drawing on extensive research, Thomas shows the heretofore-unacknowledged extent to which Chilean political parties and culture employed and responded to familial appeals, justifications, and criticisms in order to legitimize or attack politicians and parties. Thomas’s analysis covers widely divergent political contexts, and she convincingly shows how deeply rooted the familial framework is in the national psyche—and how Chileans formulated and understood the intense political conflicts that have divided the country in recent decades.” —Margaret Power, Illinois Institute of Technology