The goal of this book is to demystify the legendary Mapuche resistance to the Inkas and later to the Spaniards between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries and explain the process by which Mapuche identity was constructed. The book is of great historiographic significance. Guillaume Boccara explores the relationship among sociopolitical organization, warfare, Mapuche ethnogenesis, and colonial institutions of power, organization, and authority. He explains the mechanisms through which groups, identities, and ethnicities are constituted and identifies the social, political, and economic transformations experienced by the Reche-Mapuche of southern Chile during the colonial period. This book is exemplary in the way it combines anthropological and historical lenses and methodologies and is solidly grounded in documentary evidence. The author addresses the contemporary interest in practice theory and post-structuralism. Boccara seeks to incorporate the actions, representations, and strategies of social subjects in the construction of social models and focuses on dynamic historical processes....
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