Anthropology and History

Background: 

The history of Chile is usually made according with the oficial history, relation with the processes that can not be connected with the reality of most of people. 

In general, we can say that the history of subaltern class is very invisible. In the last years after the dictatorship and the return to democracy, the importance of the new social history in Chile has knew rescue stories of these classes. 

The connection with the anthropology has related with the problematic of etnohistory, because this discipline tries to study the history of "others" in the construction of identity and the cultural concepts applied to various researchs. The etnohistory works with the archives and the etnography researchs.

Problem: 

Even if the etnohistory is a discipline that can belongs to anthropology or history, in its context try to explain a story that we (in the most of cases) don't know, because in our educational system not learn about it. In the educational programs is considered the great history, that includes the War in Europe, the economic crisis, the global political (...) but not tell about the history of our indigenous communities or the history of our continent, the complexes processes of the colonialism, economic dependence, the systematic dictatorship for all the continent and things like that. 

When we approach the reality of people who are not considered in this great history turn up the problem of content. First of all is very difficult to approach situations, because in many cases we don't handle the theory and second (and even more difficult) is to apply the theory to the practical because we don't have the experience of the people we want to make visible in a history that reveals the omission of the subaltern classes. The academic position is a situation of privilege that can separate us (if we do not know how to handle it) from this type of research.

Proposed Solution 

I think it is necessary for those of us who want to do this type of research that we always work from the position of humility and the commitment to reveal an untold story. Ethnography is a method that is used in more than one discipline because it helps us to receive knowledge that we don't have in the experience and with knowledge that we learn with people we can write for making visible and known by all. Knowing how to use this method removing the ethnocentric negative bias and recognizing a situation of privilege is the first step for approach problems of this type. Read and learn independently is the preparation that can helps us too. 


A connection between history and anthropology can not be made if we don't touch down what we wish to study. You can get positive things from this project, which can contribute to the construction of shared knowledge in Chilean society and Latin American.