School and Social Development Among the E’ñepá Indians of the Venezuelan Amazon: An Anthropological Approach

Authors

  • Tarzycjusz Buliński

Keywords:

Indigenous schooling, E’ñepá Indians, writing, anthropological approach, developmental theory

Abstract

In this article, I would like to test how accurate the notion is 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 Indians1. I would like to examine to what extent this view is correct with respect to the E’ñepá 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 side 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 article’s 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 E’ñepá. 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

2011-01-01

How to Cite

Buliński, T. (2011). School and Social Development Among the E’ñepá Indians of the Venezuelan Amazon: An Anthropological Approach. Ethnologia Polona, 221–238. Retrieved from https://journals.iaepan.pl/ethp/article/view/623

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