Power Over Micropolitics at the University of Esmeraldas

A Case of Applied Anthropology as a Device for the Freedom of the Body Under the Hair

Abstract

This case of applied anthropology results from a contextual study, from the observation of power relations within the institution, and from the attempt to understand them. After the research work, based on questionnaires and interviews, in addition to the cases attended to by the University Welfare Directorate, the systematization of abuses based on the control of gender body expression, political-economic, and discursive positions is evident. that crossed hair/hair, clothing and militancy. The ethnography within the institution itself, the “Luis Vargas Torres” Technical University of Esmeraldas – the only public university in a province with a majority black population. The student body – to a lesser extent the teaching staff – has been forced to express with their body what the university institutional micropolitics established as normative, and which was intertwined with the racism that the student body did not want to continue assuming as they communicated in their complaints in the Directorate of University Welfare. The creation of the “ALMARGEN” research group helped to generate an applied anthropology, which illuminated the possibility of debating and approving – with some concessions in the initial claims – an affirmative action regulation in which, above all, it tends to create the academic and coexistence environment, which facilitates expression through clothing, speeches, associations and/or creativity of the university community. And that explains that no control will be exercised in classrooms and/or campuses over free expression, with emphasis on hair, also free. Applied anthropology has been more than the expression of a desire, and this is manifested in the fact that women will be the main candidates for positions of responsibility.