Abstract

In a Chile that is characterized by highly asymmetrical social relations, how do victims experience symbolic violence? This is the main question that has guided our research and for which we propose a few answers. To that end, we have chosen three typical figures of Chilean society: the woman, the Peruvian immigrant and the person of Mapuche origin. According to the results of a previous study on this subject, all of them share the fact that they are potential victims of symbolic violence committed by sectors that, from a dominant position, practice “machismo”, xenophobia, racism and classism. As these subjects develop varying degrees of consciousness with regard to the degrading, oppressive and vexing situations that they live, they conceive identitybased strategies which allow them to confront, with a major or minor degree of conflict, such manifestations of symbolic violence. The main advances of this research are presented in this article.