Etnografía con pueblos indígenas en épocas de pandemia: Reflexiones sobre las políticas públicas y las políticas científicas en el proceso de elaboración de informes voluntarios y urgentes

Abstract

The dislocations of daily life introduced by de COVID-19 pandemic prompted worldwide reflections in the face of an unprecedented situation. In a scenario in which health is a priority, those of us who carry out research in the Social Sciences and Humanities ask ourselves how to intervene from sciences viewed as “not-essential” that, nonetheless, are fundamental for the design, application and evaluation of public policies. Despite the fact that the spread of the virus and the measures of Preventive and Obligatory Social Isolation (ASPO) implemented in Argentina do not distinguish regions, ethnicities or social classes, it has a greater impact on the subalternized sectors of the population because it deepens structural inequalities. In this article we will share some of the discussions held in the process of preparing and disseminating assembled –urgent, voluntary, autonomous and ad honorem– reports that actualize long-standing articulations between social anthropologists and indigenous peoples, according to three axes of reflection: (a) Arguments posed by indigenous peoples to the state about what is defined as “problems” and “emergencies” in the context of a pandemic and how to address them, (b) particularities and potential of committed ethnography implemented through digital technologies, and (c) indigenous peoples’ proposals in the face of hegemonic dispositifs and structural violence, stated from their own knowledge, experiences and commitments to the buen vivir (good living).