Expert knowledge and urban indigenous in the sixty and seventy years (Chaco province, Argentina)

Abstract

In the article we analyze the anthropological descriptions made of indigenous domestic spaces in the Toba neighborhood of the city of Resistencia between 1969 and 1970. The work addresses the reports of metropolitan social anthropologists that operated as a legitimate way of knowing the organization of families and the interventions of other local institutions on these groups. In the 1960s, the indigenous residents of Barrio Toba were made visible within the provincial public problems due to their lack of integration and the characteristics of their housing conditions. Therefore, the hiring of experts and their spatial observations allows us to reflect on the overlaps of the academy, the developmental configuration and the indigenous problem in a markedly unequal urban setting. We wonder to what extent the specific intervention of the experts in this neighborhood, from evaluations and constructions of meanings, can be understood within the broader processes of alterization that have arisen over the period. The methodology is based on the analysis of a documentary corpus made up of the results of the consultancy carried out by the team of experts led by Esther Hermitte for the Chaco government. The purpose of the article is to review the objectifications of places, subjects, and relationships by which anthropological knowledge converges with transnational agendas, academic debates, and neighborhood institutions in a singular stage of Chaco capitalism.