A crisis of authenticity: Becoming entrepreneurial and the quest for “cultural appropriateness” among the Mapuche

Abstract

Based on multisite ethnographic work between 2018 and 2020, this article examines entrepreneurship promotion policies developed by the Chilean state directed at Mapuche people. We direct attention to how the notion of authenticity works as a hinge between Mapuche people, historical heritage, nongovernmental organizations, and public policymakers in their promotion of microentrepreneurship as a form of overcoming poverty and achieving full inclusion of Indigenous people in Chilean society. The negotiation processes concerning authenticity bring together people's aspiration to become entrepreneurs as authentic Mapuche and those seeking to initiate a “proper Mapuche business.” Authenticity, its recognition and contestation, appears as a central tenet in the formation of a particular entrepreneurial self that combines entrepreneurs' aspirations for a better life with a simultaneous seeking of an appropriate sense of being Mapuche, with acknowledgment from others. In the process, the meaning of authenticity goes beyond a primordialist understanding of the term, acquiring polysemy and affecting the arena of Indigenous entrepreneurship, as other aspects of contemporary Mapuche lives.