| The family permeates political conflicts. While virtually ignored in political science scholarship, familial beliefs often represent a major resource of language, symbols, metaphors, images, and arguments for actors engaged in political struggles. This project explores how beliefs about the family are often part of the strategies used by political actors in their attempts to gain control of the state, legitimate their political projects, justify societal mobilization, criticize their opponents, and create a space from which to speak. I examine how the family was used in the major political struggles of Chile from 1970--1990: the election of socialist president Allende, his overthrow and the establishment of the dictatorship of Pinochet, and the return of democracy in 1990. By analyzing the portrayals of the family through visual, textual, and oral communication in election propaganda, political speeches, magazines, newspapers and televised political advertisements, I develop five major categories of the uses of the family in the pursuit of political goals: Familial State, Patriarchal Leader, Familial Cartography, Militant Family, and Family Podium. Familial State encompasses the ways that family has been used as a criterion to judge the success or failure of a government and its political leaders. Patriarchal Leader refers to how familial beliefs about what constitutes a good father are used to determine the qualifications and characteristics of male political leaders' ability to govern. Familial Cartography includes familial metaphors that create and maintain citizens' understandings of the state and nation. Militant Families refers to the importance of familial identities in motivating political action. Finally, the Family Podium describes the ways that family is used to create a space from which citizens can speak back to the state and reasons they deserve to be heard. I explore the ways these strategies are employed during different political crises and by a range of different political actors, including human rights protestors, authoritarian regimes, conservative women, and political parties. Thus, this analyzes how the family is used in politics as well as the factors that either promote or constrain the five previous uses of the family in political struggles. |
