School and social development among the E'´ñepa Indians of the Venezuela Amazon: an anthropological approach

  • Tarzycjusz Buliński
Keywords: Indigenous schooling E’ñepá Indians, writing anthropological approach, developmental theory

Abstract

In this article, I would like to test how accurate is the notion that school is one of the main factors in the social development of Indian communities. According to this view, school education improves the social, political, economic and cultural situation of the Indian peoples of South America. This is a position widely circulated among the national community in the region and is the basis for development programs and projects carried out among the Indians 1.1 would like to examine to what extent this view is correct with respect to the Enepá Indians living in the Venezuelan Amazon. I approach the question of what impact schools have on the development of these communities from an anthropological perspective, and thus from the point of view of Indian social practices. The article consists of four parts. In the first part, I characterize the current socio-cultural situation of the southern E’ñepá and the activities related to school education among them, and introduce the reasons why I chose this people for my analysis. In the second part, I indicate a problem posed by analyses from within the dominant non-anthropological current of reflection on development, and present the anthropological approach to the issues referred to in the articles title. In the third part, I describe the development that is said to result from a school’s operation according to the intercultural education program being carried out among the Enepá. In the fourth section, I show, based on the example of the spread of the practice of writing how, by means of an anthropological approach, one can assess the real impact of the school on the social development of the E’ñepá Indians.

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Published
2014-12-31
How to Cite
Buliński, T. (2014). School and social development among the E’´ñepa Indians of the Venezuela Amazon: an anthropological approach. Estudios Latinoamericanos, 34, 189-208. https://doi.org/10.36447/Estudios2014.v33-34.art8
Section
III. Sociedades tradicionales contemporineas y el problema de la identidad