Espiritualidad juvenil en Chile hoy: características y ámbitos

this paper presents the results of an exploratory research which analyzes a few general characteristics of chilean youth spirituality in the current context. in the last decades, the chilean society has experienced strong tensions between the individual autonomy processes (individuation) and those from the social institutions (individualization), which is also obvious in the case of youth and the ecclesiastical institutions (specially the catholic ones). using a qualitative method, based on four focus groups composed by female and male youth, aged 17 to 20, from middle low to middle high socioeconomic level, the results show that the individual experience is salient in their spirituality, and that they partially disregard the ecclesiastical prescriptions and highlight the openness to experiences anchored in new fields that make sense to them.