Challenging Dictatorship Political Socialization: The Transformative Power of Social Movements

This paper shows the results of a qualitative study, taking the proposal that social movements transform individuals and societies. It develops two arguments to demonstrate how social movements change Chilean society and its citizens. The first is that social movements break into young people's everyday lives by changing the course of institutional political socialization and the relationship activists have with politics. Second, social movements create the conditions for activists to live egosyntonic experiences in which, momentarily, the tension between how activists perceive themselves, their desires and wishes, and the limitations that capitalist societies impose through different forms of domination disappear. Finally, the conclusion shows that studying egosyntonic experiences and accelerated socialization allows us to understand cultural changes in citizenship.