Improvising a market, making a model: social housing policy in Chile

Abstract: This paper explores processes of market creation in Chile, firstly, in the 1980s as a market for social housing was initially introduced and, 30 years later, as existing market arrangements were adapted to organize housing reconstruction after the 2010 earthquake. Looking in detail at these two cases, this paper describes a type of relationship between economics and economic processes which deviates significantly from the currently widely discussed performativity of economics. Instead, a process of economic improvisation is identified that involves the composition of market arrangements without a pre-existing economic theory or model of the economic processes at stake. Improvisation, as this paper shows, is a key under-theorized element of neoliberal transformation processes in Chile and elsewhere, and crucial to understanding neoliberal action in critical moments. The paper also proposes distinguishing different modes of economic improvisation and how these become economic models.