Field Dynamics in the Emergence of Scientific Anthropology in Chile? Some Considerations and Debates at the Beginning of the 20th Century

Abstract

This article exposed some key antecedents that we can call process of institutionalization of scientific anthropologyat the beginning of the twentieth century, specifically relating to the identification of institutional instances, actors and discussions that took place at that time about what
was defined as «object», the past and present indigenous or native population that inhabited the national territory. The above evidence the emergence of a research area without discipline, that failing in its consolidation in the university scene and/or formative of the period, besides not having
continuity as an autonomous field. Without a persistent support from the state, and as is characteristic in the emergence of science in Latin America, anthropology arises from the effort of specific actors that sustain it, from an
imaginary which places it as modern science, under the imperative moral to register what disappears with the progress.