Abstract

In this article, the authors present an analysis of the genesis and further implementation of a methodological tool which was fundamental in the constitutive phase of an interdisciplinary research project on the psychological wellbeing of Aymara children in schooling contexts in the city of Arica, in northern Chile. This region is characterized by the presence of strongly marked intercultural situations between what, simply put, could be called a hegemonic national-Chilean culture and the indigenous tradition of the Aymara minority. First, the authors reflect upon the process of elaboration of a Scale of Involvement in Aymara Culture (EICA), beginning with a first research stage consisting of anthropological and qualitative considerations of acculturation and interculturality. They then analyze how this scale was implemented following a quantitative procedure and showing how it was fine-tuned along the way in a number of different subscales. The EICA scale was developed with the goal of preventing an essentialist attitude when speaking of Aymara children, given the fact that these children live in very different situations of interculturality. Constructed on the basis of a series of cultural practices that are supposed to be characteristic of the dynamic Aymara tradition, this quantitative-qualitative tool aspires to measure, to some extent, the different degrees in which children are involved in this tradition, as they move in a dynamic continuum of complex intercultural relations. Throughout a detailed discussion of the first results of the quantitative application of the tool, the authors show its relevance and utility in order to better understand, both qualitatively and quantitatively, the dynamic social and cultural universe these Aymara children inhabit.