IDIHCS   22126
INSTITUTO DE INVESTIGACIONES EN HUMANIDADES Y CIENCIAS SOCIALES
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Identifications, cultures and groupness. Reflecting on culture from a particular ethnographic research in Argentina.
Autor/es:
BALERDI, SOLEDAD
Lugar:
Coimbra
Reunión:
Conferencia; Mapping Culture: Communities, Sites and Stories; 2014
Institución organizadora:
Centro de Estudos Sociais, Universidade de Coimbra
Resumen:
In this paper I will try to reflect, from a specific case, on the precautions that are need to be taken into account when addressing the study, from the social sciences, of cultures and communities, and also on the political implications that different approaches to this issue may have. Through an ethnographic research in a neighborhood of internal migrants belonging to an indigenous community from the Chaco region of northern Argentina that have migrated to the city of La Plata in Buenos Aires province and have settled on its periphery, I attempt to trace the senses, practices and values built by the actors around ethnicity -elements commonly understood as constitutive aspects of a specific community culture- to try to put under question the traditional notion of culture. Fundamentally I will take as central idea the specific ways in which, in this field, ethnicity is played situationally as a resource rather than as distinct and immutable trait. Finally, I will argue that, while it is necessary to understand how notions as culture or ethnicity play practically and what senses or meanings have got for the actors, the social researcher should not take these notions as naturals, but should try to deconstruct them, historize them and understand them in the specific contexts in which they come into play; in other words, the social analyst should not "uncritically adopt categories of ethnopolitical practice as categories of social analysis" (Brubaker, 2012: ?Etnicidad sin grupos?. Page: 88).