Claims of ownership, claims of dignity

Abstract

In September 2022, Chileans overwhelmingly rejected the draft of a new constitution to replace the inherited from Pinochet’s dictatorship. Existing explanations attribute the failure to a mixture of ill-designed procedures, political dynamics, and ideological distortions and fake news. However, we argue for a different interpretation, emphasizing the collision of normative worlds in the struggle for demarcating rights. Through narrative analysis of social media stories during the referendum campaign, we investigate distinct moral economies around the constitutional debate on housing rights. These reveal a tension between divergent rights claims anchored in the value of “ownership” versus “dignity.” Within these almost irreconcilable normative universes, private property condenses meanings across narratives: the value of personal home-ownership effort and the collective aspiration for decent housing access. While not inherently incompatible, these narratives evolved into polarizing channels through which property became the defining moral boundary that underlies the stories shaping Chile’s constitutional struggle over rights.