This is our eighth contribution for The Cocoon Goes Global, a series that give a sense of what the philosophy profession looks like outside of the Anglophone West. Today: Chile. This is a guest contribution by Leandro De Brasi, Director of the Master in Philosophy,, Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Santiago, Chile
Philosophy in Chile
Chile is a bit of a rarity in Latin America. For the last 30 years it has largely been, politically and economically speaking, a rather stable country. This certainly doesn’t make it a terrestrial paradise. There are, for example, many social injustices in Chile (as the recent, massive, nation-wide protests made it clear to everyone that had ignored it, see here).
Having said that, as an academic who has an employment contract with a Chilean university, you won’t get to suffer many of those injustices yourself (although you will easily become aware of them, for instance, by talking to your students). However, this shouldn’t put you off Chile: the country is currently changing and is likely to become more egalitarian (although how much more is to be seen). Moreover, injustices are everywhere and Chile is not much worse than, for example, the USA in that sense (in fact, for better or worse, Chile has mirrored many American policies and economic approaches). Also, the income/cost-of-living quotient of a junior academic philosopher is likely to be higher in Chile than, say, in the UK.
Chilean Academia
In Chile, there is no tenure (i.e. guaranteed permanent employment). Nevertheless, it is not uncommon for academics to get contracts for an indefinite period, which are subject to regularly decent academic evaluations. These jobs normally involve research, teaching and service work. The number of hours per week dedicated to each depends on a series of factors (and anyway percentages can, in practice, be set differently for different people regardless of research performance and other evaluations). Some universities differentiate between teaching-focused and research-focused academics, but even in the latter case it is unlikely that the proportion of the job devoted to research will be greater than 35% (and it is likely that you will need to work longer than your contracted hours to carry out the research you are expected to do given that many teaching and service hours, such as supervising ones, are normally not properly counted).
However, Chilean universities are gradually starting to appreciate the value of research. This is in part due to the fact that there exists a governmental accreditation system in place since the beginning of the XXI Century that aims to assure the public about the educational quality, including importantly the research quality, of both higher education institutions as a whole and their particular undergraduate and postgraduate programs (see here, link in Spanish).
However, accreditation is voluntary and some universities are still not too concerned about it. Others are concerned but their philosophy departments don’t offer undergraduate and postgraduate degrees of their own and so mostly provide philosophy courses for other programs. Those philosophy departments are not under much pressure to promote research to gain accreditation given their lack of programs. So, research-wise, the best jobs are typically found in philosophy departments that have both undergraduate and postgraduate (especially PhD) programs and belong to universities that are concerned with accreditation.[1] Nevertheless, even these departments will offer you very limited research support. Of course, a proportion of your work hours are meant to be dedicated to research, but funds to organise events, such as conferences, workshops and the like, with international guests, to cover expenses to participate in events abroad, and to purchase bibliographic materials, among other things, are scant, to say the least. The funds for research are normally obtained through external research agencies and foundations. The Chilean research agency, CONICYT, through a series of different programs, such as FONDECYT and PCI, offers, on a competitive basis, good enough funds for research. Moreover, adjudication of external research funds is one important index of research quality for accreditation. So, as a research-focused academic, you will also feel the pressure to get such external funds.
Although most philosophers in Chile work within the phenomenology and hermeneutics traditions or in the history of philosophy, with anyway a strong focus on classic “continental” philosophers, research funds are not limited to those areas and significant research has begun to be done within the “analytical” tradition in the past decade.[2] The recent development of this tradition in Chile is also reflected in the composition of its philosophy departments, which now host, speciality-wise, a more varied group of philosophers. This development also contributed to the inclusion of younger generations of academics, which more widely accept a commitment to research (in comparison to older ones, where some resistance to research can still be found).
Unfortunately, diversity doesn’t extend to other important domains. Women and other groups, such as ethnic and racial ones, are still underrepresented in philosophy, not unlike many other parts of the world. A slightly different lack of diversity is also seen within the student body. Depending on the institution, students are likely to belong to one social-economic background or other. Aside from other important consequences of this intra-institution homogeneity, given the deficient public secondary-school education, students from higher socio-economic background who have access to private education are likely to be better prepared for tertiary education. Having said that, one thing in common among local undergraduate programs is that students are, very much following an international trend, often considered first and foremost as clients and this has some bad consequences for the system, including the lowering of teaching standards. In general, undergraduate teaching experiences are not fully satisfactory. But things are somewhat different at PhD level. So, if you don’t tolerate much such experiences, it would probably be best to go for local philosophy departments that have a PhD program.
The job market
If you are interested in coming to Chile and you are a recently graduated PhD, it might be worth looking into the Fondecyt Posdoctoral program. The grant subsidises up to 3 years of research, offering a very competitive stipend as well as covering a range of expenses for the research itself and the move to Chile, and it allows the postdoc to spend up to 6 months per year abroad, and both the application process and the research can be done in English. Now, although this program doesn’t require you to do any teaching, some teaching is allowed; but notice that, in Chile, most undergraduate and postgraduate teaching is in Spanish. So, come to Chile at least willing to learn Spanish if the Postdoc is to open more stable local job opportunities to you. The Chilean philosophy job market isn’t very dynamic but opportunities emerge every so often. At least the older generations of academics are slowly but surely leaving the scene (because of age and production issues), giving others the opportunity to enter it. I have provided above some tips regarding the sort of Chilean philosophy departments you might want to, depending on your interests, consider joining. Anyway, if you think I can further help you with regard to these matters, you can contact me.
Leandro De Brasi
Philosophy Department
Universidad Alberto Hurtado
Santiago, Chile
ldebrasi@uahurtado.cl
[1] This of course is just a rule of thumb. There can be exceptions to this claim (in fact, one notable exception is the Philosophy Department at the Universidad de la Frontera). This proviso applies to most claims in this entry.
[2] I hope the continental-analytical distinction, although not precise and clear enough, to be helpful enough given the general and rough description here intended.
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