Rural Development Projects, Schooling and Territorial Transformations: A Case Study in Indigenous Communities of Andean Argentina

Jorge Luis Cladera

doi:10.20897/jcasc/8297

Abstract

This article analyzes, in four Andean indigenous communities in northwestern Argentina, the dynamics of transformation of pastoral territoriality that are occurring in recent times. A conceptual device developed by another author – the distinction between two-dimensional and zero-dimensional forms of tenure (Ingold 1987) – is used to identify the demarcation criteria underlying different native terms to designate the domestic group places. The territorial transformations that are taking place today are identified fundamentally in two family investment priorities: in building new houses, or in installing fences for the enclosure of plots. Both investment targets point to the growing economic role of rural schools as a factor that drives local economical circulations. For domestic groups with schooled children, the priority becomes to get employment at school. For domestic groups in the fission stage, the priority is to intensify local agricultural and livestock production in order to take profit of the money circulation circuits and input demands of local schools. In both cases, territorial dynamics tend to focus livestock mobility in more circumscribed and less strenuous transfer ranges, and these dynamics are expressed through modifications in the native categories used to name spaces and places.

Highlights

Pastoral societies have been emblematic cases for the study of the articulation between the territoriality of modern States and that of other livelihoods (Barth, 1976, Scott, 1987; 1998) that challenge the capacity of States to establish legible criteria for the modernization of their populations (Scott, 1998): in all cases they do so from a disadvantageous subaltern condition, which is unstable in the long term
The Rural Extension Team combined the activities of professionals from two national agencies – the National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA) and the Programa Social Agropecuario (PSA) – and three different disciplines – agronomists, anthropologists and master builders – with the aim of improving the quality of life of the indigenous communities of a region called the Zenta mountains, or “Sierras del Zenta”
When we look at the cases of domestic groups that opted for housing funds, 73.3% had school children

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Pastoral societies have been emblematic cases for the study of the articulation between the territoriality of modern States and that of other livelihoods (Barth, 1976, Scott, 1987; 1998) that challenge the capacity of States to establish legible criteria for the modernization of their populations (Scott, 1998): in all cases they do so from a disadvantageous subaltern condition, which is unstable in the long term. The impact produced by certain contemporary transformations – specially, mining investments – is of such an overwhelming scale, that it promotes an approach to its effects through a simplified dichotomous model: either pastoral societies become something else, or they perish This model, effective in alerting to the impacts that global changes produce in traditional societies, threatens to give entity to the naïve classical anthropology perspective of the folk society, whose cultural ontology, focused on an ethos of equilibrium and stasis, would be in a passive situation of cultural erosion provoked by the interference of external factors. My hypothesis is that these societies make active decisions to reconfigure their own territoriality by taking advantage of certain modernization – that is, hegemonic – devices when they are useful, without giving up the specificity of their own pastoral – that is, subaltern – livelihoods This creative manipulation of hegemonic devices configures territorialities in ways that become confusing when the information is analyzed in dichotomous terms of prevalence or decay of traditional livelihoods. Throughout this article, I will try to illustrate how these two different conceptions of tenure give meaning to the various native categories employed for referring to places, as well as the current directions into which these senses are intentionally being transformed

METHODOLOGY

Findings

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS