Enacting desired change in the present: Explaining prefigurative collective action in Chile’s 2019 social explosion

Contemporary mobilisations increasingly confront existing power structures while experimenting with alternative social relations – a dynamic often discussed as prefigurative politics. Yet social psychological research on collective action has prioritised explaining why people participate, paying less attention to what unfolds through action itself. This study examines how 16 participants in Chile’s 2019 ‘social explosion’ made sense of their participation. Drawing on interviews and thematic analysis informed by the elaborated social identity model, we examine whether this involvement was understood in prefigurative terms and if so whether this was grounded in prior commitments or emerged through collective action. We identify four processes through which most participants came to understand their participation as prefigurative: collective identity formation, collective self-objectification, empowering outcomes of collective self-objectification, and prefigurative realisation. Although participants entered the mobilisation with activist commitments, these processes point to the interaction between prior experience and dynamics of struggle, as political meanings were validated and reconfigured in practice. These findings indicate a need for social psychology to approach collective action not just as a behavioural outcome but as a potentially transformative practice in which action is not merely a means to change but a site where social change may begin to take shape.