Indigenous youth subcultures and new media in Latin America

联合国估计，拉丁美洲约有50%的土著居民有互联网接入，而整个大陆的这一比例为67%。但在这一连接鸿沟的两边，年轻人是目前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个数字通信平台，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。该项目探讨了拉丁美洲一些最脆弱的群体--阿根廷、智利和厄瓜多尔的年轻马普切人和基奇瓦土著人民--如何将艺术、社交媒体和新技术结合起来，作为自我表达、抵抗和与更广泛世界互动的工具。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。文化创造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，研究仍然倾向于集中在发展指标上，如与教育和就业有关的连通性。这忽略了一个显而易见的问题：“年轻的原住民究竟用数字技术做了什么？”在20世纪90年代，社区电台和粉丝等模拟技术在塑造和表达现代城市土著身份以及在政治和艺术之间建立新的联系方面发挥了至关重要的作用。对于今天的土著青年来说，互联网、数字媒体和Facebook、Instagram、TikTok和YouTube等内容共享平台填补了这一角色，所有这些都对文化的创造、传播和消费产生了根本性的影响。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战略。通过这样做，这个项目挑战了对土著文化的同质化理解，这种理解无意中加强了相互交织的不平等，使土著青年在社区内外被边缘化。这个跨学科项目结合了年轻的马普切和安第斯·基奇瓦创作者和社区成员的人种学案例研究及其合作。在线民族志将在不同的社交媒体平台上绘制在线青年文化地图。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研究，以了解线上和线下文化和社区之间的共生关系。我们将把这些方法与对年轻土著创作者制作的文化产品--音乐、视频、动画、摄影等--的解释学阅读结合起来，以更好地理解他们所促进的具体话语、意义和社区。该项目将与英国、阿根廷和厄瓜多尔的研究人员合作，制作一系列学术文章，供对拉丁美洲和其他地区的土著人民、青年文化和数字媒体感兴趣的学者参考。英国和拉丁美洲的网站、在线展览和公共活动将展示年轻土著创作者的文化产品，并促进关于他们面临的挑战的讨论。所有这些材料都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的报告，并在国家机构、土著组织以及国家和国际非政府组织中分发。这将致力于对侧重于社会包容和支持年轻土著艺术家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，并为关于社交媒体非殖民化的更广泛的讨论提供信息。

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.