In this path-breaking book, Rappaport describes and analyzes the work of “intellectuals” that have during recent decades informed and shaped the indigenous movement in the province of Cauca (Colombia). Based on her fieldwork and involvement with the indigenous movement, she presents the book as the outcome of a dialogue that became “an intercultural exercise, in which I shared ideas originating in anthropological and cultural theory and, in turn, absorbed some of what drove their own agenda” (p. 5). The book is particularly significant given the social and political conflicts that have shaped the fate of Colombia and foreclosed “utopian dreams” (1).
The idea of interculturalism is present throughout the book both as a methodological tool, replacing “classic thick description with engaged conversation and collaboration,” and as a category of analysis. Rappaport uses the notion of interculturalism to reveal how indigenous intellectuals “experiment with culture” in self-conscious and pragmatic ways. Specifically, interculturalism refers to a “method for appropriating external ideas,” and constitutes a sphere of interaction that articulates the network of activists, colaboradores, and supporters of Cauca's indigenous movement. More importantly, according to Rappaport, interculturalism is “a utopian political philosophy aimed at achieving interethnic dialogue based on relations of equivalence and at constructing a particular mode of indigenous citizenship in a plural nation” (7).
One of the book's major insights is its challenge to the idea that Colombia's indigenous movement is monolithic, with a homogenous set of actors. Rappaport shows how diversity and heterogeneity are at the movement's core in Cauca. This, in turn, implies framing ethnic politics as a result of a process of “negotiation of a broad network of political and ethnic identities, a process that includes not only regional indigenous intellectuals, but less cosmopolitan local actors as well, a web of affiliations that also encompasses individuals not attached to indigenous communities, such as colaboradores, anthropologists, and state functionaries” (8).
Throughout the book, Rappaport traces a distinction between culturalist projects and discourses of sovereignty. While culturalist projects are characterized by “an inward-looking emphasis on the revitalization of cultural specificity,” discourses of sovereignty “stress … transnational languages of minority rights that discursively and practically link the indigenous movement to other progressive social sectors and make possible negotiation with the state” (15). Through these categories, Rappaport explores “the articulation of the indigenous cultural project with the movement's political objectives” (15). This move leads her to consider “the positioning of indigenous intellectuals in local and regional venues, as well as … the fluidity of their discursive practices within the diverse political contexts in which they operate” (15).
Based on ethnographic inquiry into specific cultural projects such as the PEB (Bilingual Education Program), the Nasa School of Thought, and shamanic research, Rappaport unearths the political underpinnings of these practices, and forces us to rethink the frontier between ‘culture’ and ‘politics;’ or between “culturalist discourses” and “discourses of sovereignty.”
She provides eloquent examples of how indigenous leaders and politicians face “the contradiction of simultaneously leading an indigenous community and representing the state” (265). She not only unearths how the practices of local and regional activists are intertwined, but also how “culturalist discourses” and “discourses of sovereignty” cannot be understood separately, as referring to mutually exclusive domains.
Rappaport invites us to think of culture as “a utopia, a projection toward the future” (273). Her book shows us how to do collaborative research in ways that are both political and academically relevant. In fact, Rappaport believes that it is not possible to measure indigenous theory and intellectuals against the grain of academia. The accomplishments of indigenous intellectuals may be “measured by how effectively they engage communities to bring projects to fruition in the local sphere” (274).
