Children’s agency and cultural appropriation through the lens of South American anthropology: Mapuche and Toba/Qom children facing Catholic education

Abstract

As experiencedresearchers from Argentina, we set out to draw attention to the diversity andinequalities within the childhoods of the so-called ‘Global South’ that the‘Global North’ uniformly addresses as ‘other childhood.’ Based on ourlong-standing ethnographic research with indigenous children in Argentina, wewill present a conceptual discussion on children’s agency and culturalappropriation, through a comparative study of Catholic education andappropriation processes that Toba/Qom and Mapuche children have experienced indifferent regions of the country. After a brief historical reconstruction, weanalyse comparatively contemporary projects of different Catholic congregationstowards Mapuche and Toba/Qom children, exploring simultaneously how childrenthemselves receive such proposals. Considering these processes are nothomogenous nor linear, we will argue for an approach that contextualiseschildren’s agency and cultural appropriation in sociohistorical and culturalterms, within different power relationships.