Smartphones and Chilean Social Identity : A Tool to Cope and Manage Oppression

Abstract

This study examines the economic, political and social relationships between urban and rural Chile, the extent to which rural Chile is oppressed, and the role the smartphone plays in the rural individual's management of oppression. The author used qualitative research methods and conducted seventeen interviews with youth from Valparaiso and La Canela, urban and rural sectors, in order to gather the characteristics and configurations of these relationships. Using Social Identity Theory as a theoretical framework, the author was able to further understand the social divides between urban and rural Chile, as social group characteristics showed the nature of their unequal relationship and oppression of rural Chileans. Using Social Identity Theory also allowed her to create my own theoretical contribution, which she named the "Spectrum of Belonging," a categorized model that used the foundational concept of group membership in social identity, to explore how rural youth experience departure from rural sectors, one of the major ways the author found rural youth to be oppressed. With the "Spectrum of Belonging", the author acknowledged several socioeconomic factors that were apparent in each category that influenced its nature and were important in the discussion of smartphone use and managing and coping with oppression. These socioeconomic factors within each category of the "Spectrum of Belonging" were compared and considered within the context of smartphones and existent psychosocial coping mechanisms, to understand how the device can act as a tool in coping with oppression.