Introduction to the Special Issue: Rethinking Indigenous Education from a Latin American Perspective

Abstract

Cultural contexts influence the conceptual tools used in anthropological research in profound ways. Through this special issue, we hope to contribute not only accounts of education in other places but also novel ways of understanding the past and present experiences of Indigenous education. Our choice sought to present research conducted within Latin American configurations and intellectual trajectories, yet maintaining an open dialogue with research done in the Anglo-American tradition of anthropology of education. Although it is one of the more promising fields in Latin America, little research on schooling and other forms of education in Amerindian communities has been published in mainstream anthropological or education journals, 1 in contrast, for example, to the large number of references to the Latin American tradition of popular education and its emblematic figure, Paulo Freire. As in other areas, ethnographic research on education in Latin America has developed within several related disciplines, whereas the incorporation of anthropological theory within studies on formal schooling has remained problematic. By focusing on the theme of Indigenous education, we sought to bring together ethnographic research that engages creatively with various traditions of anthropology and ethnology. 2 Although there is a long history of involvement of anthropologists in the implementation of educational policies and practices for Indigenous peoples in Latin America, particularly within the indigenista tradition, the anthropological study of education is fairly recent and has a particular history in each country. There is a considerable distance between the theoretical issues discussed by anthropologists working with Indigenous groups and their “non-theoretical” involvement with Amerindian village schools, often in response to the communities where they work. The present moment offers the opportunity of relating Indigenous education to ethnological research on Amerindian peoples of Latin America, a field that has witnessed significant growth in empirical research and theoretical sophistication during the past decades. In this vein, some recent developments, not fully reflected in this issue, might deeply alter current frameworks for conceiving Indigenous education broadly. The anthropology of Amazonian groups, which, after significant advances in the classical themes of cosmology, myth and ritual, kinship and social organization, is opening up to a broader dialogue with all human sciences (Overing and Passes 2000), offers significant alternatives. Amerindian cosmologies challenge the western notion of “multiculturalism” through the provocative concept of “multinaturalism” (Viveirosde-Castro 1998), the notion that all natural beings are the result of metamorphoses of an original, universal humanity. Latin American elaborations of postcolonial theories