Re-working everyday concepts of civic virtue and ethnic belonging among indigenous youth in Chile

Abstract

This article discusses Mapuche adolescents' everyday articulations of civic virtue and ethnic belonging by juxtaposing their participation in their communities, schooling and civil society at large. It situates the youth within the exclusionary practices of education and broader society, and in the context of Chile's recent history of expanding youth civic participation. Chile is a highly racialised country and indigenous pupils experience altogether different modalities of inclusion and belonging compared to non-indigenous peers. Focus groups and interviews conducted during 2007–2008 are drawn on to explore how ideals of civic belonging are negotiated by those on the margins of society as a result of their schooling experiences and exposure to worldwide youth cultures. The article questions the ability of national schooling to produce a consistent discourse regarding a culturally diverse citizenry given that its practices are on the whole exclusionary towards Mapuche pupils. I argue instead that Mapuche youth construct a notion of the ‘good citizen’ from their home communities which respond to, and discursively resist, society's exclusionary values.

Keywords:

• everyday ethnicity
• citizenship
• education
• Chile
• Mapuche

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to David Beckingham and Sarah Radcliffe for their thoughts on an earlier draft of this article, and to the two anonymous referees for their helpful suggestions and comments.

Notes

1. The largest indigenous population (84%) in Chile, estimated to be 1,442,215 individuals over 5 years of age in the latest national census from 2012. Available from http://www.ine.cl/.

2. Young (1999) asserts that differentiated forms of citizenship embrace both local cultural affinities and a common polity.

3. Ethnic identifications are not invoked all the time; they are not always relevant or salient in everyday life but can be switched to and from according to necessity or desirability within particular contexts (Fenton 2003). I look in this paper at instances where ethnic identifications are subverted by concerns over civic belonging and how at times they overlap.

4. The category ethnic citizen is an ideal which correlates with Young's (1999) ‘differentiated forms of citizenship’. Mapuche are formally national citizens since they formally share the same civic rights as non-ethnic Chileans. However, since they are not recognised in the constitution as people and do not have full liberty to express ethnic rights to cultural diversity (such as bilingualism and alternate religious beliefs) in public life, they do not participate as ethnic citizens.

5. The everyday refers to the quotidian aspects and routines of the social world and its meanings, whereas the alternative refers to those consciously – and often premeditated – political discourses and actions that predominantly emanate from institutional levels so as to produce a nationalist ideology (Mavratsas 1999). Both are socially constructed, but participation in the latter sphere is restricted both temporally and spatially compared to the day-to-day activities of the former (Elias 1978).

6. http://www.untechoparachile.cl/?page_id = 1212.

7. These can be accessed from: http://www.ilo.org/indigenous/Conventions/no169/lang--en/index.htm and http://www.leychile.cl/Navegar?idNorma = 30620, respectively.

8. Programa Origines initiated in 2001 focused on indigenous development in the areas of land, health and education. For further information, documents can be downloaded from http://www.origenes.cl/

9. See Terwindt (2009) for an example of politicised Mapuche youth.

10. Mapuche knowledges and their corresponding world vision are systematised around the connection between the individual and the land (the mapu, which constitutes not only the physical ground or geographical surroundings but also the spiritual cosmos). The importance of azche – the formation of the person, and razquiduam – thoughts about the world from a Mapuche perspective, for example, are critical to understanding identity formation among the Mapuche, and analysis of the data during this research was conducted thematically according to these and other Mapuche concepts.

11. Many of the pupils were boarders at the schools and only went home at weekends.

12. Although Goffman's work does not specifically address ethnic, national or civic categories of belonging, his conceptual approach offers an analytical perspective on how such categories and collective understandings are formed through everyday practices as a result of socialised and taken-for-granted knowledges from above – be it via institutions, media or public discourse.

13. Schools, in contrast, are often described as enclosures of regulation, discipline and entrapment (Gore 1998).

14. These included going out to collect firewood, tending to animals and helping with the home farming.

15. Details of the differences between intercultural and non-intercultural schools will feature in a later paper. Owing to spatial restrictions, the broader significance of culturally inclusive curricula cannot be addressed in this paper.

16. As described earlier: The Indigenous law (Ley Indigena) of 1993 and the ILO 169 ratified in 2008.

17. Dark cloak used in traditional Mapuche dress.

18. I emphasise that this framing is in regard to practice, since the participants did not doubt their group membership – being Mapuche – as a category of belonging (Webb 2012).