Warren, Kay, and Jean Jackson

Bueno para acordar con lo que dicen, pero un poco de identidad cliche. probablemente hay que reconocer que es solo una introduccion general, pero mas de lo que se viene repitiendo desde hace mucho.


Warren, Kay and Jean Jackson, eds. 2003. “Studying Indigenous Activism in Latin America.” In: Indigenous Movements, Self-Representation and the State in Latin America. Austin: University of Texas Press. Pp. 1-46.

The authors consider the problems of studying indigenous movements in Latin America as a tension between academic work, advocacy and positioning in the politics of representation. They point to the parallel emergence of indigenous activism and the need to turn form class base analysis to identity politics, which recognize ethnicity as a particular dimension. This perspectives has articulated with discourses emphasising positive and common aspects of an indigenous condition, these forms of essentialism that anthropologists have contributed to shape have been articulated in struggles with the nation state. However essentialism is also a limiting force when imposed as a norm that erases heterogeneities. They claim that there is no sense to making a value over these constructions but rather to understand their complexities and take into account the particular historical contexts and the contingencies in which identities are constituted. If the importance of the roles of the states in the processes of this conformation is something general across different Latinamierican countries, the form of this interaction is never homogeneous. The role of international agencies and economy has to be considered as shaping the differential outcomes, as these agencies have their particular agendas and approaches to the topic, for instance by considering ethnicity as a problematic and a right of the individual. Neoliberal policies of reducing state intervension in some cases perversely coincide with indigenous claims, however it does also be a force that further marginalizes and limits the groups possibilities of autonomy [multiculturalism is not discussed very much here]. Thus the processes of identification can be better understood in its conjuncture, as movements combining achievements of self-determination and of state subordination.