Abstract

This book breaks fresh ground as a comparative study between contemporary Australia and Chile from a socio-historical, cultural and geopolitical point of view within the focus of the Free Trade Agreement – FTA – signed by Chile and Australia in July 2008. Firstly, it examines the dominant self-perceptions and international projections of both countries and their relation to each other in light of globalisation and economic progress particularly since the return of democracy in Chile in 1990. At the global level, the political and economic changes after the Cold War have reconfigured transnational relations and representations in the Pacific Rim and have transformed Australia and Chile, usually imagined as distant places, into closely interconnected spaces. Secondly, the book analyses how power relations are deployed in official discourse, particularly regarding Australian-Chilean relations and to what extent they suggest mutual geopolitical asymmetries where capital has been placed at the centre.