Giovanna Bacchiddu winner of Whitten Publication Subvention 2018

Giovanna Bacchiddu winner of the Norm and Sibby Whitten Publication Subvention Award 2018

Giovanna Bacchiddu, of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, was the winner of the Norm and Sibby Whitten Publication Subvention Award, of US$2500, for her book “Gente de Isla. Una etnografía de Chiloé.”

Gente de Isla. Una etnografía de Chiloé

Bacchiddu’s book discusses social and religious life in a small indigenous community on an island in the archipelago of Chiloé in southern Chile, in themidst of different processes of modernization. It describes how everyday life in the community and Catholicism are so deeply interwoven that they appear to coincide; the fundamental rule of reciprocity emerges fully as a model for both social life and the supernatural connections between the living and the world of the spirits. Providing a detailed account of the minutiae of the intertwinement of local Catholicism and different processes of modernization in people’s daily lives,  the book contributes to the reflection on the meaning and outcomes of indigenous modernities. It fills an ethnographic gap of research on the Chiloé, contrasting with and complementing the more numerous works on other indigenous people in Chile (like the Mapuche) and South America at large. The book is a translation into Spanish of previously published English- language peer-reviewed journal articles. It will therefore also enrich the relatively limited production of recent anthropology and ethnography in Spanish. The book has been accepted for review by Rumbo Sur /Ethnographica.