Children's agency and cultural appropriation through the lens of South American Anthropology. Mapuche and Toba/Qom children facing Catholic education

GARCÍA PALACIOS, MARIANA; SZULC, ANDREA

Third World Thematics

Taylor & Francis

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2022

2380-2014

As experienced researchers from Argentina, we set outto draw attention to the diversity and inequalities within the childhoods ofthe so-called ´Global South´ that the ´Global North´ uniformly addresses as ´other childhood´. Based on our long-standing ethnographic research withindigenous children in Argentina, we will present a conceptual discussion on children´s agency and cultural appropriation, through a comparative study of Catholic education and appropriation processes that Qom and Mapuche children have experienced in different regions of the country. After a brief historical reconstruction, we analyse comparatively contemporary projects of different Catholic congregations towards Mapuche and Toba/Qom children, exploring simultaneously how children themselves receive such proposals. Considering these processes are not homogenous nor lineal, we will argue for an approach that contextualises children´s agency and cultural appropriation in sociohistorical and cultural terms, within different power relationships.