The Representations of the Mapuche Society in Two Chilean Anthropologists: Teresa Durán and Rolf Foerster

Abstract

This article analyzes the production of the anthropological narrative about Mapuche society represented in four scientific papers by two Chilean anthropologists in the 1980s and 1990s: Teresa Durán and Rolf Foerster. It is interesting to know the modes of representation of the Mapuche present in anthropological texts, considering some theoretical perspectives associated with the category of author, anthropological writing, and representation. The study follows the guidelines of qualitative content analysis, which allows identifying the topics of interest studied by the authors and the typologies of “study subjects” observed and reflected in their texts. On the one hand, research allows to define a temporal and contextual variation in the approaches of both authors and, secondly, to identify two distinct ways of approach and representation of the Mapuche, which makes possible to speak of two styles of anthropology that cross the anthropological production in Chile.