Indigenous youth subcultures and new media in Latin America

拉丁美洲土著青年亚文化和新媒体

• 批准号: AH/W010828/1
• 负责人: Ignacio Aguilo
• 金额: $ 25.12万
• 依托单位: University of Manchester
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FW010828%2F1
• 关键词: Indigenous; youth; subcultures; new; media

The UN estimates that around 50% of Indigenous people in Latin America have Internet access, compared to 67% for the continent as a whole. But on both sides of this connectivity gap, young people are by far the largest user group. In the past 20 years, Indigenous organisations in Latin America have developed multiple digital communication platforms through which they actively participate in local, national and international agendas. Nevertheless, racism, discrimination and poverty remain endemic. This project explores how some of the most vulnerable populations in Latin America - young Mapuche and Kichwa Indigenous people in Argentina, Chile and Ecuador - combine art, social media and new technology as tools of self-expression, resistance, and interaction with the wider world. The transformative impact of digital technology and the Internet on youth culture is undeniable. So too is the importance of cultural creation and consumption as a means of self-expression and community formation for young people. However, in the Global South, research still tends to focus on development indicators like connectivity in relation to education and employment. This neglects the obvious question: "What do young Indigenous people actually do with digital technology?" In the 1990s, analogue technologies like community radios and fanzines were vital in shaping and expressing a modern urban Indigenous identity and forging new links between politics and the arts. For young Indigenous people today, this role is filled by the Internet, digital media and content-sharing platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, all of which have had a fundamental impact on how culture is created, disseminated and consumed. This makes studying online cultures, and the social interactions and communities they generate, vital in order to understand the systemic racism and social disadvantage faced by Indigenous youth and the strategies they use to address them. In doing so, this project challenges homogenised understandings of Indigenous cultures that inadvertently reinforce intersecting inequalities and marginalise Indigenous young people within and outside their communities.This interdisciplinary project combines ethnographic case studies of, and collaborations with, young Mapuche and Andean Kichwa creators and community members. Online ethnography will map online youth cultures across different social media platforms. Given the enduring importance of territory, local communities and face-to-face interaction for both Indigenous and subcultural life, we will also carry out face-to-face ethnography to understand the symbiotic relationship between online and offline culture and communities. We will combine these approaches with a hermeneutic reading of cultural products produced by young Indigenous creators - music, video, animation, photography, etc. - to better understand the specific discourses, meanings and communities they facilitate.A collaboration between researchers in the UK, Argentina and Ecuador, the project will produce a series of academic articles of benefit to scholars interested in Indigenous peoples, youth cultures and digital media in Latin America and beyond. A website, online exhibition and public events in the UK and Latin America will showcase cultural products by young Indigenous creators and facilitate discussions about the challenges they face. All of these materials will contribute to a report on young Indigenous people's use of new media in cultural production and consumption, to be circulated among state agencies, Indigenous organisations and national and international NGOs. This will aim to make a contribution to existing programmes that focus on social inclusion and providing support to young Indigenous artists. Finally, this work can also provide insights into the future of Indigenous movements and communities more broadly, and feed into wider discussions about the decolonisation of social media.

联合国估计，拉丁美洲约有50%的土著居民可以上网，而整个非洲大陆的这一比例为67%。但在连接差距的两端，年轻人是迄今为止最大的用户群体。在过去的20年里，拉丁美洲的土著组织开发了多种数字通信平台，通过这些平台，他们积极参与地方、国家和国际议程。然而，种族主义、歧视和贫穷仍然普遍存在。本项目探讨拉丁美洲最弱势群体——阿根廷、智利和厄瓜多尔的年轻马普切和克奇瓦原住民——如何将艺术、社交媒体和新技术结合起来，作为自我表达、反抗和与更广阔世界互动的工具。数字技术和互联网对青年文化的变革性影响是不可否认的。文化创作和消费作为年轻人自我表达和社区形成的一种手段的重要性也是如此。然而，在全球南方，研究仍然倾向于关注与教育和就业相关的连通性等发展指标。这忽略了一个显而易见的问题：“年轻的土著居民实际上用数字技术做了什么？”在20世纪90年代，社区广播和杂志等模拟技术对于塑造和表达现代城市土著身份，以及在政治与艺术之间建立新的联系至关重要。对于今天的土著青年来说，互联网、数字媒体和Facebook、Instagram、TikTok和YouTube等内容分享平台填补了这一角色，所有这些平台都对文化的创造、传播和消费方式产生了根本性影响。这使得研究网络文化及其产生的社会互动和社区至关重要，以便了解土著青年面临的系统性种族主义和社会劣势，以及他们用来解决这些问题的策略。在此过程中，该项目挑战了对土著文化的同质化理解，这种理解无意中加剧了相互交叉的不平等，并使土著青年在社区内外被边缘化。这个跨学科项目结合了马普切和安第斯基奇瓦青年创作者和社区成员的人种学案例研究和合作。在线人种学将绘制不同社交媒体平台上的在线青年文化地图。鉴于领土、当地社区和面对面互动对土著和亚文化生活的持久重要性，我们还将开展面对面的民族志，以了解线上和线下文化与社区之间的共生关系。我们将把这些方法与对年轻原住民创作者创作的文化产品（音乐、视频、动画、摄影等）的解释学解读结合起来，以更好地理解它们所促进的具体话语、意义和社区。该项目由英国、阿根廷和厄瓜多尔的研究人员合作，将制作一系列学术文章，让对拉丁美洲及其他地区原住民、青年文化和数字媒体感兴趣的学者从中受益。英国和拉丁美洲将设立网站、在线展览和公共活动，展示年轻原住民创作者的文化产品，并促进讨论他们所面临的挑战。所有这些材料将有助于编写一份关于土著青年在文化生产和消费中使用新媒体情况的报告，该报告将在国家机构、土著组织以及国内和国际非政府组织之间分发。其目的是为注重社会包容和向土著青年艺术家提供支持的现有方案作出贡献。最后，这项工作还可以为更广泛的土著运动和社区的未来提供见解，并为有关社交媒体非殖民化的更广泛讨论提供素材。