UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM SCHOOL OF SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL POLICY The moral economy of ‘Respect’ in Chilean Society Macarena Orchard R. Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Doctor in Philosophy Supervisors: John Holmwood & Tracey Warren February, 2019 1 Abstract This thesis interrogates the experience of respect and disrespect in everyday life from a sociological perspective, with the aim of elucidating the relationship between respect and inequality. It involves a theoretical exploration of the phenomenon of respect as well as an empirical study, which focuses on Chilean society. This study analyses the meanings, practices and narratives associated with, as well as the distribution of, the experience of respect and disrespect in Chile. It involves a mixed method study which includes secondary data analyses together with semi-structured interviews of people of different ages, sex and class in Santiago de Chile. Based on both deductive and inductive criteria, the thesis suggests that respect is the norm, the language and the practice through which we communicate value to others, which is culturally situated and changes historically according to how value is defined in any given context. It claims that there are three main types of respect: categorical, positional and performance and it argues that looking at the tensions between these three types of respect is a fruitful way to read cultural changes regarding the expectations of treatment that are formed in social interactions. Following this approach, the thesis depicts the ‘moral economy of respect’ in Chile, by describing how the participants experience different types of respect. It demonstrates that the experience of respect and disrespect is unequally distributed, but the structure of advantage and disadvantage involved in this experience becomes evident when looking at the process, rather than the outcome, of getting respect. The thesis identifies two main processes of securing respect: earning and commanding respect, both of which demonstrate the importance of agency in the achieving of respect. Finally, the thesis concludes by suggesting that studying respect is productive in the understanding of the experience, consequences and reproduction of inequality. Keywords: respect, recognition, class, gender, morality, agency, moral economy 2 This thesis is dedicated to the memory of my grandmother, Blanca (1918- 2018), and to Christian and Mila, for the future… with love. 3 Acknowledgements This thesis benefited from the wisdom, friendship and support of many people I would like to thank and recognize. First of all, I would like to thank my supervisors, John Holmwood and Tracey Warren, who walked all along the way with me during these years. I am extremely grateful to them for their trust and unconditional support; for understanding my doubts and hesitations and helping me to believe in my work. They both provided invaluable insights to the development of this thesis, as well as a safe space of intellectual freedom, for which I will always be thankful. Second, I would like to thank the lectures, administrative staff and PhD community from the School of Sociology and Social Policy, who made my PhD process easier in so many ways. I would like to thank specially Amal Treacher Kabesh and Andrew Yip, who were Director of Doctoral Studies during my time as student; Alison Haigh, who was the kindest Postgraduate Administrator; and my internal assessors, Tony Fitzpatrick and Nick Stevenson, both of whom provided invaluable feedback along the process. To my fellow PhD friends: Stef, Ed, Juan, Eleanor, Hannah: thank you! Without you this would have been a very lonely journey. I want to thank specially Stef Williamson and Ed Wright for their amazing friendship, for proofreading many chapters of this thesis and patiently helping me to translate Chilean slang to English! This thesis is the outcome of the last 4 years of work, but its roots started a long way before. I want to take this opportunity to thank all my friends from the Human Development Team at United Nations Development Program in Chile. My thinking on respect derives directly from the work we did together. In this context, I cannot but recognize the friendship and intellectual influence of Pedro Güell, who pointed out to me to the reality of inequality of dignity. I also want to thank Maya Zilveti, for her friendship and advice on several topics related to qualitative research for this project. This thesis benefited from conversations with many friends and scholars who offered their wisdom and advice at different stages of the project. I want to thank Diego Zavaleta from OPHI, with whom I shared so many interesting discussions about the notion of humiliation. I want to thank Osvaldo Larrañaga, Matías Cociña and Raimundo Frei, from the ‘Inequality Project’ at UNDP, for so many interesting and rewarding discussions. I want to thank Emmanuel Barozet, Kathya Araujo, Claudia Jordana and Rachel Theodore for offering important insight to my work. 4 Finally, I want to recognize Melissa Sebrechts from the University of Amsterdam, with whom I had the pleasure of sharing friendship and inspiring theoretical discussions during the last 2 years of this project. I want to thank CONICYT for granting me the financial support to complete this project, as well as OPHI for providing me with the 2009 Missing Dimensions in Poverty Dataset which was crucial for this thesis. I would like to thank all the participants of this study, who shared their time and experiences with me. I hope this thesis does justice to their views and feelings. I also want to thank all those who helped me to recruit my participants. For confidentiality reasons, I cannot name them. I want to thank all my friends who provided emotional support during these years and made me feel that home wasn’t as far away as, in reality, it was. I would like to thank specially my friends from the Chilean Community in Nottingham, in particular Daniela Méndez and Katia Valenzuela, for their friendship and for sharing this journey with me. And to Paula, René, my incondicionales (Cata, Dani, Dan, Pauli), Mónica, Claudia, Juani, Lei: thank you for always being there. I would like to thank my family, for their love and support. To my dad, for reminding me that what I was doing was important. To my mum, for reminding me that I was capable of doing it. I want to specially recognize the support of my sister Ximena, with whom I had the privilege of sharing this PhD journey. Sis: you cannot imagine how happy I am to share existential and intellectual questions with you. And finally, I want to thank my husband Christian, without whom this project would have never seen the light. His love and support, and his willingness to cross the world with me in this adventure, was essential for me to be able to write this thesis. At the end of this journey, we received the most beautiful gift in the world: the arrival of our daughter, Mila. A powerful reminder that, in the end, there is always light. 5 Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................................................................ 2 Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................................................... 4 Table of Contents .............................................................................................................................................................. 6 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................................ 9 Chapter 1: Literature Review ................................................................................................................................... 26 1.1 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................................... 26 1.2 What is Respect? ................................................................................................................................................. 27 1.2.1 The elusive nature of respect ............................................................................................................... 27 1.2.2 The language of Respect in social sciences .................................................................................... 31 1.3. The relationship between Respect and Inequality .............................................................................. 37 1.3.1 The unequal distribution of Respect: how and why? ................................................................. 37 1.3.2 Respect as explanans of traditional forms of inequality ........................................................... 40 1.4. Towards a Sociology of Respect .................................................................................................................. 44 1.4.1 A preliminary definition and typology of Respect ...................................................................... 44 1.4.2 Towards a Phenomenology of Respect ............................................................................................ 51 1.4.3 Research Questions .................................................................................................................................. 53 1.5. Conclusion ...........................................................................................................................................................