Training in anthropological research in Mexico. The Palerm-Viqueira Paradigm at the University of Guadalajara

Abstract

This text presents an approach that considers anthropological research as a set of skills and knowledge that are cultivated through the university curriculum of anthropologists. It is important to understand how the training of undergraduate anthropologists responds to universities’ administrative and teaching conditions, but it is also influenced by disciplinary perspectives corresponding to the way in which the discipline itself has been cultivated in the local and national context. The objective of this essay is to recognize the influence that, what I have called the Palerm-Viqueira paradigm, has had on the training of anthropologists at the University of Guadalajara. This paradigm is embedded in a curriculum that offers adverse administrative conditions for its proper fulfillment, a form of mismatch between what one wants to achieve and what is available to do so. The methodology is documentary and systematizes the teaching experience of some participants in the program. The main results are the recognition of this mismatch between the model and its context, in addition to the particularities that the program offers and makes it viable in terms of disciplinary training.