Innovation as translation in Indigenous entrepreneurship: lessons from Mapuche entrepreneurs in Chile

ABSTRACT

Discourses of innovation are prone to homogenisation, and as such, their effects in the development of Indigenous enterprises are highly ambivalent. The elusiveness of innovation can also work as a flexible set of ideas through which Indigenous entrepreneurs reconfigure existing commercial practices. Focussing on two Mapuche enterprises, this article explores how innovation in the context of Indigenous entrepreneurship is performed as a process of cultural translation. We advance a definition of innovation focused on the transformation of Indigenous daily practices into valuable products within a market dominated by non-Indigenous clients and mediators.

RÉSUMÉ

Les discours d’innovation sont enclins à l’homogénéisation et, de ce fait, leurs effets dans le développement des entreprises autochtones sont hautement ambivalents. Le caractère insaisissable de l’innovation peut également se traduire par un ensemble d’idées flexible, à l’aide duquel les entrepreneurs autochtones peuvent reconfigurer des pratiques commerciales existantes. Notre étude se concentre sur deux entreprises Mapuche, et nous y explorons comment, dans le contexte de l’entreprenariat autochtone, l’innovation est pratiquée comme un processus de traduction culturelle. Nous offrons une définition de l’innovation qui se concentre sur la transformation de pratiques journalières autochtones en produits de valeur dans un marché dominé par des clients non-autochtones et des médiateurs.

KEYWORDS:

• Indigenous entrepreneurship
• innovation
• Mapuche
• Chile
• cultural translation

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our interlocutors in the Mapuche territory for their generosity in allowing us to explore development and entrepreneurship with them. We thank Fernanda Gallegos, Valentina Turén, and Constanza Quezada for their assistance during part of the research process resulting in this article, and Elliot Oackley, Caleb Yunis and Owen Gurrey for their editorial assistance. We also would like to thank our anonymous reviewers, whose insightful comments helped us to strengthen the argument of our article.

Notes

1 The Mapuche corresponds to roughly 80 per cent of the entire Indigenous population in Chile.

2 Conflicts over properties have escalated since the 1990s and to this day, at least twenty deaths have been reported among both non-indigenous workers and landowners and Mapuche activists involved in land takeovers. Human rights organisations have condemned police repression of Mapuche activists and the controversial application of anti-terrorist measures in the detention of those involved in these conflicts (Richards 2013). The current Pinochet-era constitution does not acknowledge internal diversity of the nation and thus denies the legitimacy of Indigenous rights for self-determination. A democratically elected convention with reserved seats for Indigenous representatives is currently in charge of drafting a new constitution.

3 According to data gathered by the largest household survey in Chile, CASEN (Encuesta de Caracterización Socioeconómica Nacional), multidimensional poverty is higher in Indigenous than non-indigenous households, 26.4 per cent vs 15.8 per cent (Ministerio de Desarrollo Social 2017).

4 All interviewees were provided informed consent forms, and all names have been replaced with pseudonyms to protect the privacy of participants and their enterprises. Recorded interviews were anonymised, transcribed and analysed with Dedoose^© software.

5 Comunidad Indigena is an administrative unit represented by elected board members in charge of appeals and the supervision of projects affecting local populations, such as infrastructural improvements and health assistance programmes. This legal figure was established by the 1993 Indigenous Law. In line with a history of illegal land encroachment by non-indigenous landholders, the extension of most communities corresponds only partially the reservations (reducciones) established in the aftermath of the colonisation of the Mapuche region Wallmapu in the twentieth century. Today, community members (socios) own land as individual property within the comunidad. Membership to a community is voluntary, but often preferred as it could ensure access to those state programmes targeting Indigenous communities instead of individual beneficiaries.

6 In rural southern Chile, gringo typically refers to white people from wealthier countries and, to a lesser degree (but not in the case of this quote), to Chilean landowners of European descent.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by ANID FONDECYT [grant number 11180179], [grant number 1191377]; The Center for Intercultural and Indigenous Research (CIIR) ANID/FONDAP/15110006; The Research Center for Integrated Disaster Risk Management (CIGIDEN), ANID/FONDAP/15110017; The ‘Fondo Chile de Todas y Todos 2018’ of the Ministry of Social Development and Family of Chile; Viodemos Center ANID/Millennium Science Initiative Program/ICS2019_025; and Anillos project ANID PIA SOC180033.

Notes on contributors

Daniela Soto Hernández

Daniela Soto Hernández is an anthropologist, currently carrying out a PhD in International development in the University of Sussex (UK) and teaching at the School of Anthropology, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Her research focuses on lithium and energy transition, territoriality, narratives of development, and indigeneity.

Marcelo González Gálvez

Marcelo González Gálvez is an assistant professor in Anthropology at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. His research interests include the notions of disaster and failure, relations, interethnic encounters and the theory and epistemology of anthropology.

Piergiorgio di Giminiani

Piergiorgio Di Giminiani is an associate professor in Anthropology at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. He is the author of Sentient lands: indigeneity, property and political imagination in neoliberal Chile (2018). His research focuses on land, property, conservation, and indigeneity in Chile and Italy.