People and jobs in the process of commodification of indigenous Chaco crafts

Abstract

I analyze the way in which two groups of artisans from the Wichí and Qom people interact with workers from a government program for rural development and an NGO focusing on increasing sales by improving the quality of the handicraft and the regularity of the deliveries.

This ethnographic research was carried out between August 2012 and August 2018, including the collection of the information and the analysis and reflection on the data, resulting in my Ph.D. thesis. 

Kinship, differences in control over the group’s money, type of products to be acquired with that money, age differences, ability to use shamanic or witchcraft attacks to apply pressure on the crafstpeople and commercial priorities will generate several dynamics, some of which will dissociate the product from the producer, others will favor the artisan over the quality of the craft.