Becoming Mapuche

Becoming Mapuche
Author: Magnus Course
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2011-11-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0252036476

A nuanced exploration of one of the largest and least understood indigenous peoples, the Mapuche of Chile. In addition to accounts of the intimacies of everyday kinship and friendship, the book also offers ethnographic analyses of the major social events of contemporary rural Mapuche life.

Becoming Mapuche

Becoming Mapuche
Author: Magnus Course
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2011-11-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 025209350X

Magnus Course blends convincing historical analysis with sophisticated contemporary theory in this superb ethnography of the Mapuche people of southern Chile. Based on many years of ethnographic fieldwork, Becoming Mapuche takes readers to the indigenous reserves where many Mapuche have been forced to live since the beginning of the twentieth century. In addition to accounts of the intimacies of everyday kinship and friendship, Course also offers the first complete ethnographic analyses of the major social events of contemporary rural Mapuche life--eluwün funerals, the ritual sport of palin, and the great ngillatun fertility ritual. The volume includes a glossary of terms in Mapudungun.

The Mapuche in Modern Chile

The Mapuche in Modern Chile
Author: Joanna Crow
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2013-01-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813045029

The Mapuche are the most numerous, most vocal and most politically involved indigenous people in modern Chile. Their ongoing struggles against oppression have led to increasing national and international visibility, but few books provide deep historical perspective on their engagement with contemporary political developments. Building on widespread scholarly debates about identity, history and memory, Joanna Crow traces the complex, dynamic relationship between the Mapuche and the Chilean state from the military occupation of Mapuche territory during the second half of the nineteenth century through to the present day. She maps out key shifts in this relationship as well as the intriguing continuities. Presenting the Mapuche as more than mere victims, this book seeks to better understand the lived experiences of Mapuche people in all their diversity. Drawing upon a wide range of primary documents, including published literary and academic texts, Mapuche testimonies, art and music, newspapers, and parliamentary debates, Crow gives voice to political activists from both the left and the right. She also highlights the growing urban Mapuche population. Crow's focus on cultural and intellectual production allows her to lead the reader far beyond the standard narrative of repression and resistance, revealing just how contested Mapuche and Chilean histories are. This ambitious and revisionist work provides fresh information and perspectives that will change how we view indigenous-state relations in Chile.

Endangerment, Biodiversity and Culture

Endangerment, Biodiversity and Culture
Author: Fernando Vidal
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2015-06-19
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317538072

The notion of Endangerment stands at the heart of a network of concepts, values and practices dealing with objects and beings considered threatened by extinction, and with the procedures aimed at preserving them. Usually animated by a sense of urgency and citizenship, identifying endangered entities involves evaluating an impending threat and opens the way for preservation strategies. Endangerment, Biodiversity and Culture looks at some of the fundamental ways in which this process involves science, but also more than science: not only data and knowledge and institutions, but also affects and values. Focusing on an "endangerment sensibility," it encapsulates tensions between the normative and the utilitarian, the natural and the cultural. The chapters situate that specifically modern sensibility in historical perspective, and examine central aspects of its recent and present forms. This timely volume offers the most cutting-edge insights into the Environmental Humanities for researchers working in Environmental Studies, History, Anthropology, Sociology and Science and Technology Studies.

Race and the Chilean Miracle

Race and the Chilean Miracle
Author: Patricia Lynne Richards
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2013-06-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0822978679

The economic reforms imposed by Augusto Pinochet's regime (1973-1990) are often credited with transforming Chile into a global economy and setting the stage for a peaceful transition to democracy, individual liberty, and the recognition of cultural diversity. The famed economist Milton Friedman would later describe the transition as the "Miracle of Chile." Yet, as Patricia Richards reveals, beneath this veneer of progress lies a reality of social conflict and inequity that has been perpetuated by many of the same neoliberal programs. In Race and the Chilean Miracle, Richards examines conflicts between Mapuche indigenous people and state and private actors over natural resources, territorial claims, and collective rights in the Araucania region. Through ground-level fieldwork, extensive interviews with local Mapuche and Chileans, and analysis of contemporary race and governance theory, Richards exposes the ways that local, regional, and transnational realities are shaped by systemic racism in the context of neoliberal multiculturalism. Richards demonstrates how state programs and policies run counter to Mapuche claims for autonomy and cultural recognition. The Mapuche, whose ancestral lands have been appropriated for timber and farming, have been branded as terrorists for their activism and sometimes-violent responses to state and private sector interventions. Through their interviews, many Mapuche cite the perpetuation of colonialism under the guise of development projects, multicultural policies, and assimilationist narratives. Many Chilean locals and political elites see the continued defiance of the Mapuche in their tenacious connection to the land, resistance to integration, and insistence on their rights as a people. These diametrically opposed worldviews form the basis of the racial dichotomy that continues to pervade Chilean society. In her study, Richards traces systemic racism that follows both a top-down path (global, state, and regional) as well as a bottom-up one (local agencies and actors), detailing their historic roots. Richards also describes potential positive outcomes in the form of intercultural coalitions or indigenous autonomy. Her compelling analysis offers new perspectives on indigenous rights, race, and neoliberal multiculturalism in Latin America and globally.

Narratives and Imaginings of Citizenship in Latin America

Narratives and Imaginings of Citizenship in Latin America
Author: Cristina Rojas
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 142
Release: 2016-01-08
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317656504

This book looks at how citizenship has been imagined and transformed in Latin America through the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries from different disciplinary perspectives including anthropology, history, urban planning, geography and political studies. It looks beyond citizenship as a formal legal status to explore how ideas about citizenship have shaped political and historical landscapes in different ways through the region. It shows how conceptions of citizenship are intertwined with understandings of natural spaces and environments, how indigenous politics are ‘de-colonizing’ western liberal conceptions of citizenship, and how citizenship is being transformed through local level politics and projects for development. In addition to showcasing some of the novel, emerging forms of citizenship in the region, the book also traces the ways in which historical narratives of citizenship and national belonging persist within present day politics. Collectively, the chapters show that citizenship remains an important entry point for understanding politics, projects of reform, and struggles for transformation in Latin America. This book was published as a special issue of Citizenship Studies.

A Companion to the Anthropology of Death

A Companion to the Anthropology of Death
Author: Antonius C. G. M. Robben
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 676
Release: 2018-04-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1119222311

A thought-provoking examination of death, dying, and the afterlife Prominent scholars present their most recent work about mortuary rituals, grief and mourning, genocide, cyclical processes of life and death, biomedical developments, and the materiality of human corpses in this unique and illuminating book. Interrogating our most common practices surrounding death, the authors ask such questions as: How does the state wrest away control over the dead from bereaved relatives? Why do many mourners refuse to cut their emotional ties to the dead and nurture lasting bonds? Is death a final condition or can human remains acquire agency? The book is a refreshing reassessment of these issues and practices, a source of theoretical inspiration in the study of death. With contributions written by an international team of experts in their fields, A Companion to the Anthropology of Death is presented in six parts and covers such subjects as: Governing the Dead in Guatemala; After Death Communications (ADCs) in North America; Cryonic Suspension in the Secular Age; Blood and Organ Donation in China; The Fragility of Biomedicine; and more. A Companion to the Anthropology of Death is a comprehensive and accessible volume and an ideal resource for senior undergraduate and graduate students in courses such as Anthropology of Death, Medical Anthropology, Anthropology of Violence, Anthropology of the Body, and Political Anthropology. Written by leading international scholars in their fields A comprehensive survey of the most recent empirical research in the anthropology of death A fundamental critique of the early 20th century founding fathers of the anthropology of death Cross-cultural texts from tribal and industrial societies The collection is of interest to anyone concerned with the consequences of the state and massive violence on life and death

Sentient Lands

Sentient Lands
Author: Piergiorgio Di Giminiani
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2018-11-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0816539111

In 1990, when Augusto Pinochet’s 17-year military dictatorship ended, democratic rule returned to Chile. Since then, Indigenous organizations have mobilized to demand restitution of their ancestral territories seized over the past 150 years. Sentient Lands is a historically grounded ethnography of the Mapuche people’s engagement with state-run reconciliation and land-restitution efforts. Piergiorgio Di Giminiani analyzes environmental relations, property, state power, market forces, and indigeneity to illustrate how land connections are articulated, in both landscape experiences and land claims. Rather than viewing land claims as simply bureaucratic procedures imposed on local understandings and experiences of land connections, Di Giminiani reveals these processes to be disputed practices of world making. Ancestral land formation is set in motion by the entangled principles of Indigenous and legal land ontologies, two very different and sometimes conflicting processes. Indigenous land ontologies are based on a relation between two subjects—land and people—both endowed with sentient abilities. By contrast, legal land ontologies are founded on the principles of property theory, wherein land is an object of possession that can be standardized within a regime of value. Governments also use land claims to domesticate Indigenous geographies into spatial constructs consistent with political and market configurations. Exploring the unexpected effects on political activism and state reparation policies caused by this entanglement of Indigenous and legal land ontologies, Di Giminiani offers a new analytical angle on Indigenous land politics.

Contested Nation

Contested Nation
Author: Pilar M. Herr
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Total Pages: 169
Release: 2019-12-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0826360955

Throughout the colonial period the Spanish crown made numerous unsuccessful attempts to conquer Araucanía, Chile’s southern borderlands region. Contested Nation argues that with Chilean independence, Araucanía—because of its status as a separate nation-state—became essential to the territorial integrity of the new Chilean Republic. This book studies how Araucanía’s indigenous inhabitants, the Mapuche, played a central role in the new Chilean state’s pursuit of an expansionist policy that simultaneously exalted indigenous bravery while relegating the Mapuche to second-class citizenship. It also examines other subaltern groups, particularly bandits, who challenged the nation-state’s monopoly on force and were thus regarded as criminals and enemies unfit for citizenship in Chilean society. Pilar M. Herr’s work advances our understanding of early state formation in Chile by viewing this process through the lens of Chilean-Mapuche relations. She provides a thorough historical context and suggests that Araucanía was central to the process of post-independence nation building and territorial expansion in Chile.