Indigenous Identity Formation in Chilean Education

New Racism and Schooling Experiences of Mapuche Youth

Andrew Webb

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000436594
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Multicultural Education

This book offers rich sociological analysis of the ways in which educational institutions influence indigenous identity formation in Chile. In doing so, Webb explores the mechanisms of new racism in schooling and demonstrates how continued forms of exclusion impact minority groups.

By drawing on qualitative research conducted with Mapuche youth in schools in rural and urban settings, and in private state-subsidised and public schools, this volume provides a comprehensive exploration of how national belonging and indigeneity are articulated and experienced in institutional contexts. Close analysis of student and teacher narratives illustrates the reproduction of historically constructed ethnic and racial criteria, and demonstrates how these norms persist in schools, despite apparently progressive attitudes toward racism and colonial education in Chile. This critical perspective highlights the continued prevalence of implicit racism whereby schooling produces culturally subjective and exclusionary norms and values.

By foregrounding contemporary issues of indigenous identity and education in Chile, this book adds important scholarship to the field. The text will be of interest to researchers, academics, and scholars in the fields of indigenous education, sociology of education, and international and comparative education.

1 Indigenous Identities in a New Racism Era

DOI: 10.4324/9781003090700-2

It is paramount, before addressing the racialising experiences of Mapuche youth in schools, to address the situated meanings of being indigenous. It is evident from the introduction, where I discussed ethnic minority inequalities, that this terminology is somewhat broader than indigeneity. In this chapter, I unpack some of the criteria that are particular to indigenous identity, whilst also demonstrating its commonalities with a more general ethnic identity literature. Having outlined these conditions, I provide evidence for the ways Mapuche youth articulate their indigenous belonging and their management of tensions between permanence (or being) and transition (becoming). This is never a purely internalised issue but a social one, referring to how individuals understand their place in racialised taxonomies and how they establish criteria of similarity and difference to others. In an era of new racism, difference is rarely constructed around biological or moral criteria of inferiority in contemporary Chilean society, having shifted – like most or all societies – towards cultural explanations of difference and individual merits. An initial question, then, is how indigenous youth express ideas about racial/ethnic difference having grown up under these conditions, especially in a national context in which mestizaje complicates simple, naturalised, categories of difference.

By using the term identity, I am entering into one of the broadest, most ambiguous, and highly contested areas in social science; so much so that some theorists have deemed it redundant (see Anthias, 2002; Brubaker & Cooper, 2000). Identity, even in its definition, throws up all manner of apparent contradictions; the Latin identitas (from the root idem) meaning absolute or exact likeness and sameness simultaneously expresses that which is distinguishable or enduringly different from another (Jenkins, 1996). Yet rather than making this concept unavailing, I argue that this shows its appropriateness for drawing out the dynamic, dialectic, often contradictory, and overlapping nature of the modern construct of self, which reveals deep-rooted needs and desires for inclusion, for finding similarity, and committing oneself to significant (and generalised) others whilst expressing creative difference, distinctiveness, and individualism (Brewer, 1991; Jenkins, 1997). By speaking of identity or identification, I refer to the process of seeking one’s place in the world; whether sameness to, or distinctiveness from others. As Jenkins (1992) notes, this is a socially constructed process caught between mutually entangled aspects of internal identification and external categorisation, that is, between personal choices and structurally imposed and ascribed identities.

The young people who participated in the research are of different ages, at various stages of their education, living in two very different parts of Chile, but they all share the same challenge of constructing an indigenous identity in a society, and institutions, that operate according to racial categories.

Racial, Ethnic, and Indigenous Identities

As I already argued in the introduction, race is an unsubstantiated concept for distinguishing between populations, which was discredited following the atrocities of Nazism (Fenton, 1999). Continued use of the term racial identity by some scholars mirror “naturalised” categorisations that occur in people’s everyday talk, but numerous authors propose that social scientists should avoid replicating this (Brubaker, 2004; Miles & Brown, 2003). Hence, I include racism and racialisation as analytical points of reference for this book because they refer to structural issues of power that categorise individuals into positions of subordination and inferior status, but racial identity as an internalised identification seems an inappropriate term.

It is true that contrary arguments have also been raised, positing that it is (etymologically) impossible to have racialising factors without race. Like Bonilla-Silva (1997), I argue that since races are treated as natural phenomena, as modes of political, cultural, and social competition between groupings – much like class and gender – the consequences of these collective actions create an organising principle that has independent effects. The hierarchical structuring of people premised on perceived racial differences creates very real material and relational disparities between those categorised into these groupings. This feeds back into and moulds the identities that individuals share. A problem, however, is that racial identities then become somewhat inevitable, imposed and static categorisations that individuals have little control over.

An alternative is the concept of ethnic identity, which since the 1960s has become increasingly influential in scholarship. The classic definition of ethnic groupings or ethnie is that it describes relationships based on shared myths and historical memories, linguistic, religious or other common cultural traits, and connections to a homeland (Hutchinson, 1996; Smith, 1986). In a climate in which the mobilisation and interconnectivity of groups across the world is too great for tribal affiliations, and in which the nationalist narrative of citizenship has failed to break down smaller group affiliations, “ethnic groups” and ethnic identities have become vital to the language of social analysis (Eriksen, 2002). This is not only because it provides a less pejorative narrative of group differentiations than tribes or races, but equally important is its capacity to account for perceived cultural traits of similarity, beyond biological ones, and for opening up avenues of choice and identity negotiation (Guibernau & Rex, 1997; Waters, 1990).

These cultural traits are also susceptible to racialising categorisation so in this sense we might question how far ethnicity has taken us beyond the politically charged and sometimes violent use of race (Fenton, 1999). In this sense, we must avoid assuming race is exclusionary and ethnicity is inclusive, given specific histories of forced migration, ethnic violence, and the segregation of ethnic groupings (Wimmer, 2013). Yet one advantage is its plasticity; it can be used to analyse how individuals and communities conceive of, or use their social positioning (positionality), and the cultural/symbolic codes made available to them, to create a sense of belonging that changes over time and place (Jimenez, 2004).

Exactly how or why individuals “choose” ethnic identities is a matter of greater contention in the relevant literature. Theories of self-interest (instrumentalism) or decisions based on particular contexts (situationism) have been presented as constructivist accounts of identity management that contrast more essentialist or primordial forms; those perceptions of fixed similarity or commonality to others, usually premised on common descent (Wimmer, 2013). The former shares a common objective of capturing fluid conceptualisations of constructed difference by transcending dichotomous categories of difference, and the “fixities of identity and culture that are so prominent in racialized discourse” (Anthias, 2001, p. 619). A middle ground approach has been to suggest that both essentialist and situationist accounts of ethnic identity formation are valid (Brubaker, 2004). That is, perceptions of enduring similarity do not necessarily prevent possibilities of change, as Stuart Hall argued:

Cultural identity … is a matter of ‘becoming’ as well as of ‘being’. It belongs to the future as much as to the past. It is not something which already exists, transcending place, time, history and culture. Cultural identities come from somewhere, have histories. But like everything which is historical, they undergo constant transformation.

(1990, p. 52)

Nuanced approaches to understanding identity management therefore need to take into account both the external, structural imposition of categories of difference, as well as internalised boundary markings and meaning-making created by individuals (Jenkins, 1997). A particularly meaningful contribution to unravelling how ethnic identities are worked out is a focus on the everyday meanings and practices that contribute towards the construction of categories of similarity or belonging, as well as differences and exclusion (Brubaker et al., 2006; Edensor, 2002; Karner, 2007). The everyday marks an important lens for understanding when, where, and how categories of belonging are negotiated and experienced. This is crucial because it avoids the assumption that ethnic identity is always a relevant or salient feature of people’s lives (Brubaker et al., 2006). It also provides relief from the exclusively politicised and nationalist versions of ethnic belonging and conflict, which pits groups against one another. Ethnic identity is always political to some extent inasmuch as it involves positioning oneself in relation to the other (Jenkins, 1997). However, “everyday ethnicity” can be distinguished from those narratives that politicise the boundary between an “us” and a “them” for the purposes of domination, since the former is more concerned with making sense of one’s place in the world (Anthias, 2002). As Hale (2004) observes, this informs us about “the set of points of personal reference on which people rely to navigate the social world they inhabit, to make sense of the myriad constellations of social relationships that they encounter” (2004, p. 463). In short, a discussion of the banal or mundane “from below,” helps us understand the ethnic choices that people make away from the “extraordinary, politically charged, and emotionally driven” (Billig, 1995, p. 44; Edensor, 2002; Fenton, 2003). This is particularly useful when addressing youth identities within routinised school life.

My concerns are directed towards assessing how individuals identify, discuss, and understand similarities and differences to significant others around them in school contexts where racialised meanings and categories may be imposed. Therefore, although my discussion of Mapuche identity is analytically framed by ethnicity, it is only in response to the practices of the respondents themselves in their daily lives. In this sense I concur that, “the idea of ethnicity is a concept of practice, not an analytical concept” (Eder et al., 2002, p. 14). For this same reason, the settings and events which transpire in daily activities are all the more important for understanding how and when ethnicity is “set off” or when it becomes salient (Fenton, 2003). Crucially, these ethnic criteria take place in social contexts already defined by hierarchical relationships of difference. This is why it is compatible to speak of ethnic identity within racialising structures; adapting the Marxian dictum, people act within the racialised and post-colonial circumstances not of their own choosing.

Throughout the rest of the book, I demonstrate the ways that Mapuche youth draw on ideas about their identities and cultural belonging to negotiate their school lives. I do so in direct reference to indigenous identity. As discussed above, ethnic minority groups is such an overarching term for a huge diversity of interdependent peoples on the planet. Even leaving aside intersecting identities formed by particular interest groups, sexual orientations, or physical/cognitive/sensory disabilities, we are still left with a bewildering array of cultural and religious properties that distinguish, or are imposed to distinguish, groupings of individuals from a numerical majority.

Eriksen argues that internal disti...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Abbreviations
• About the Author
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Indigenous Identities in a New Racism Era
• 2 From Colonialism to Neoliberal Success
• 3 Mapuche Youth Identities in Chilean Schools
• 4 Staff Perspectives and Implicit Racism
• 5 Staying on Course
• Conclusions
• Appendix
• Index