Anthropological dialogues to untangle the socioenvironmental crisis in Chiloé

Abstract

During the first months of 2016, diverse ecological perturbations in the marine ecosystem arose in the Chiloé archipelago which caused one of the most severe socio-environmental crises of the last years in the southern Chile.
Although it is possible to identify the specific limits of the crisis associated to the algal bloom, the research presented in this paper shows that the crisis is part of a broad process of socio-environmental transformation experienced
in the archipelago with implications to the different social and ecological life dimensions of Chiloé. Based on anthropological research carried out over the last seven years, this paper presents, as an anthropological dialogue, the key elements that allow for the untangling of Chiloé's socio-environmental crisis: a history of the boom and the decline of the exploitation of natural resources,
territorial conflicts and collective action strategies of local groups, the intra and extra-regional migration phenomena and the dynamics of archipelagic mobility. Taking into account these different dimensions and approaches, this
paper discusses the intersections between research and public anthropology, identifying the main challenges that the socio-environmental crisis imposes over the discipline. In short, this article exposes the evidence of the unfolding
of a transformation process, whose future, still uncertain, could represent the shifting point for a territorial recomposition of the Chiloé archipelago.