Marjorie Murray
Biographic Data
| ID | 3634799 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Marjorie Murray |
| GIVEN NAMES | Marjorie |
| FAMILY NAME | Murray |
| SIGNATURE | MURRAY M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8391-4830 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 255 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Care in translation: Girls, responsibilities, and local leadership in Southern Bahia
After years of limited impact and perceptions that its programs were externally imposed and reflected a north–south bias, the NGO where Marjorie conducted fieldwork in Southern Bahia sought local leadership to strengthen its community connections. Jacqueline, who grew up in the neighbourhood, assumed this role and reshaped the organization's workshops. This paper examines how her interpersonal skills and situated knowledge of local girls' lives e…
Cuidados en disolución y fronteras disciplinarias. Sufrimiento psíquico y zonas de indeterminación en Santiago de Chile
This article explores configurations of care that arise in contexts where psychic suffering fails to stabilize as a fully legible condition, either clinically or socially. Based onethnographic research in Santiago de Chile with two women whose life trajectories aremarked by persistent distress, eroded family ties, and ambivalent relationships withmental health institutions, we introduce the concept of care in dissolution. Drawinginspiration from …
Where the bullet lands: Violence, motherhood and the uneven terrain of citizenship in Chile
This article examines how citizenship is made and unmade in neoliberal Chile through the ethnographic case of Linda, a mother living in La Pintana, Santiago, whose nine-month-old son, Baltazar, was killed by a stray bullet while sleeping at home. Drawing on two years of fieldwork, press and institutional materials, we show how spectacular loss triggers ‘flash’ state care: a surge of visibility, political attention and assistance that temporarily …
Plurinationality as an empty signifier in the Chilean constitutional convention of 2021–2022: Recognition of difference and construction of the common
This article examines the history of plurinationality during the Chilean Constitutional Convention of 2021–2022 from an ethnographic perspective. Through the analysis of speeches, internal documents, and semi-structured interviews with Indigenous and non-Indigenous representatives, and drawing on Ernesto Laclau’s theory, we examine plurinationality and its evolution as an ‘empty signifier.’ Initially, plurinationality was presented by Indigenous …
The impacts of tourism, before, during and after the Covid pandemic: The case of Rapa Nui in the East Pacific
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the evolution of the tourism sector on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and its interaction with social transformations before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Design/methodology/approach The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with residents, tourism stakeholders and public authorities, complemented by participant observation and analysis of policy documents, official reports an…
Le quita el pecho a su hijo y se va a trabajar”: Estereotipos de indianidad y violencias históricas en la percepción de equipos de salud sobre la maternidad de migrantes bolivianas en Chile
Although the migration of women has gained increasing visibility in migration studies, little attention has been paid to the maternal experiences of Bolivian women who work in masculinized sectors such as agriculture and commerce. This article draws on research that explored maternal and child care practices among both health teams and migrant adults who entered Chile through irregular border crossings and were responsible for children and adoles…
Social Transformations during Infancy: Contributions through a Crisis-Oriented Lens
The Cambridge Handbook of Psychological Anthropology
Bringing together contributions from a global team of renowned scholars, this Handbook provides a comprehensive guide to the dynamic field of psychological anthropology. It is divided into five parts and includes a critical updating of the theoretical foundations for psychological anthropology, covering cognitive, psychodynamic, linguistic, and phenomenological views. It provides the first-ever lifespan perspective on human development in culture…
Critical reflexivities of women who cared for others during their childhood
This study examines the childhood care experiences of women between 20 and 30 years of age from low-income households in Santiago, Chile, by employing semi-structured interviews and qualitative analysis. At present, women understand their caregiving roles as older sisters, one which burdened them with agency practices, shaping critical reflections regarding the social organisation of care and influencing their present identity. They also articula…
Ways of Not-Knowing in Neoliberal Chile: Notes Towards a Dark Anthropology
Through two significantly distinct ethnographic case studies, both based in Santiago, Chile, we argue for the need to attend to experiences which are not conceptualised by our interlocutors, or that remain ‘dark’ in terms of their ontological and representational properties. We point out that anthropology has been ill-equipped to deal with these ineffable margins, and point to conceptual arches which could be used transversally in what we call a …
More than mothers: Changing intimacies and relationships among low-income women in Chile
In Chile, low-income women who are mothers are confronted daily with a normative ideal that exacerbates them as caregivers, together with public demands and social policies that value their hyper-rationality and hyper-austerity in the management of their families. This emphasis on their reproductive roles obliterates their emerging sense of intimacy and significant relations. Based on three case studies, in this article, we reflect on urban low-i…
Conociendo intimidades frágiles y esquivas de mujeres en Santiago más allá de los cuidados: Un Primer Intento
Si bien hace décadas se han desarrollado estudios acerca de los cambios contemporáneos en las configuraciones de la intimidad, en Chile se ha dado poca atención a los cambios en la intimidad de las mujeres, particularmente aquellas pertenecientes a estratos económicos bajos. Teniendo como base nuestras investigaciones etnográficas, y profundizando en las vidas de dos mujeres, en este artículo reflexionamos sobre el camino hacia la intimidad como …
Personal autonomy, volition and participation during early socialization: A dialogue between the Lopi model and ethnographic findings in a Mapuche context ( Persona autónoma, volición y participación …
This article seeks to connect ethnographic findings from a study on parenting, childcare and early childhood in Chile’s Mapuche communities with facets of the LOPI model. From Facet 1, we observe that children are included in social situations from an early stage, which empowers them to learn how to interact through such instances as greeting others, commensality and hospitality, displaying will as well as motivation. From Facet 2, we highlight t…
Nobody’s Perfect: Making sense of a parenting skills workshop through ethnographic research in a low-income neighbourhood in Santiago de Chile
Nadie es Perfecto (Nobody’s Perfect, or NEP) is a parenting skills workshop aimed at ‘sharing experiences and receiving guidance on everyday problems to strengthen child development’. This article explores this workshop in terms of its relationship with the daily lives of participants, based on one year of fieldwork focused on families with young children in a low-income neighbourhood in Santiago. While caregivers frame their parenting efforts as…
Raising children in hostile worlds in Santiago de Chile: Optimism and 'hyper-agentic' mothers
Based on an ethnographic research on early mothering with a small and heterogeneous group of women living in different areas of Santiago, Chile - and a follow-up study six years later - in this article we look closely at how mothering takes place through a sense of optimism while living in a hostile world, contrasting our findings with similar research in northern countries. Rather than waiting for opportunities to present themselves, women's sen…
Ethical Challenges of Parenting Interventions in Low- to Middle-Income Countries
This article explores ethical issues raised by parenting interventions implemented in communities in low- to middle-income countries (LMICs) with rural, subsistence lifestyles. Many of these interventions foster "positive parenting practices" to improve children's chances of fulfilling their developmental potential. The practices are derived from attachment theory and presented as the universal standard of good care. But attachment-based parentin…
Hacia una ciencia social crítica. Entrevista a Didier Fassin
Care and Relatedness among Rural Mapuche Women: Issues ofCariñoand Empathy
Recounting concrete daily practices of mutual care-ayuda(help),estar atenta(being aware), andestar ahí(being there)-we examine the enactment and narratives of what these women labelcariño, or affection. We argue that these women's caring practices and sense ofcariñoare coherent with the acknowledged volitional and autonomic features of Mapuche personhood. We also claim that paying specific attention tocariñoprovides novel insight for an understan…
Parenting: Kinship, Expertise, and Anxiety
Americanae nace como un proyecto conjunto que surge dentro de la Red Europea de Información y Documentación sobre América Latina (REDIAL), y que ha afrontado la Biblioteca de la Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo (AECID). Esta nueva biblioteca virtual hace más accesibles los libros digitales de tema americanista a los investigadores y usuarios interesados de cualquier parte del mundo
Back to Work? Childcare Negotiations and Intensive Mothering in Santiago de Chile
In this article, I reflect on the negotiations involved in childcare arrangements during the first year of life in two groups of mothers in Santiago. I focus on the ways in which local imageries of motherhood interact with global tendencies in intensive mothering and the current public encouragement of increasing women's participation in the workforce. In this study, low-income and lower middle class women prioritize staying with the baby over th…
Apprehending Volition in Early Socialization: Raising "Little Persons" among Rural Mapuche Families
On the basis of ethnographic fieldwork with rural Mapuche families in the Araucanía region of Chile, this article analyzes ways in which Mapuche parenting practices and the process of socialization during early childhood involve and transmit a sense of volition that is intrinsic to Mapuche notions of personhood and autonomy. Recounting concrete daily events, we describe how children make use of their own initiative and intentionality when explori…
Glimpses of agency
Previous articleNext article FreeGlimpses of agency Han, Clara. 2012. Life in debt: Times of care and violence in neoliberal Chile. Berkeley: University of California Press.Marjorie MurrayMarjorie MurrayPontificia Universidad Católica de Chile Search for more articles by this author Pontificia Universidad Católica de ChilePDFPDF PLUSFull TextEPUBMOBI Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked…
Childbirth in Santiago de Chile: Stratification, Intervention, and Child Centeredness
On the basis of ethnographic work with women from different economic and educational backgrounds in Santiago, I describe the experiences of labor and birth from the point of view of women's priorities, socioeconomic constraints, and relationships with the medical system. I specifically focus on their desires expressed during the late prenatal period and their narratives of the actual birth. Class and the differences in opportunities resulting fro…
The Cambridge Handbook of Psychological Anthropology
Bringing together contributions from a global team of renowned scholars, this Handbook provides a comprehensive guide to the dynamic field of psychological anthropology. It is divided into five parts and includes a critical updating of the theoretical foundations for psychological anthropology, covering cognitive, psychodynamic, linguistic, and phenomenological views. It provides the first-ever lifespan perspective on human development in culture…
Ethical Challenges of Parenting Interventions in Low- to Middle-Income Countries
This article explores ethical issues raised by parenting interventions implemented in communities in low- to middle-income countries (LMICs) with rural, subsistence lifestyles. Many of these interventions foster "positive parenting practices" to improve children's chances of fulfilling their developmental potential. The practices are derived from attachment theory and presented as the universal standard of good care. But attachment-based parentin…
Parenting: Kinship, Expertise, and Anxiety
Americanae nace como un proyecto conjunto que surge dentro de la Red Europea de Información y Documentación sobre América Latina (REDIAL), y que ha afrontado la Biblioteca de la Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo (AECID). Esta nueva biblioteca virtual hace más accesibles los libros digitales de tema americanista a los investigadores y usuarios interesados de cualquier parte del mundo
Apprehending Volition in Early Socialization: Raising "Little Persons" among Rural Mapuche Families
On the basis of ethnographic fieldwork with rural Mapuche families in the Araucanía region of Chile, this article analyzes ways in which Mapuche parenting practices and the process of socialization during early childhood involve and transmit a sense of volition that is intrinsic to Mapuche notions of personhood and autonomy. Recounting concrete daily events, we describe how children make use of their own initiative and intentionality when explori…
Back to Work? Childcare Negotiations and Intensive Mothering in Santiago de Chile
In this article, I reflect on the negotiations involved in childcare arrangements during the first year of life in two groups of mothers in Santiago. I focus on the ways in which local imageries of motherhood interact with global tendencies in intensive mothering and the current public encouragement of increasing women's participation in the workforce. In this study, low-income and lower middle class women prioritize staying with the baby over th…
Childbirth in Santiago de Chile: Stratification, Intervention, and Child Centeredness
On the basis of ethnographic work with women from different economic and educational backgrounds in Santiago, I describe the experiences of labor and birth from the point of view of women's priorities, socioeconomic constraints, and relationships with the medical system. I specifically focus on their desires expressed during the late prenatal period and their narratives of the actual birth. Class and the differences in opportunities resulting fro…
Care and Relatedness among Rural Mapuche Women: Issues ofCariñoand Empathy
Recounting concrete daily practices of mutual care-ayuda(help),estar atenta(being aware), andestar ahí(being there)-we examine the enactment and narratives of what these women labelcariño, or affection. We argue that these women's caring practices and sense ofcariñoare coherent with the acknowledged volitional and autonomic features of Mapuche personhood. We also claim that paying specific attention tocariñoprovides novel insight for an understan…
More than mothers: Changing intimacies and relationships among low-income women in Chile
In Chile, low-income women who are mothers are confronted daily with a normative ideal that exacerbates them as caregivers, together with public demands and social policies that value their hyper-rationality and hyper-austerity in the management of their families. This emphasis on their reproductive roles obliterates their emerging sense of intimacy and significant relations. Based on three case studies, in this article, we reflect on urban low-i…
Raising children in hostile worlds in Santiago de Chile: Optimism and 'hyper-agentic' mothers
Based on an ethnographic research on early mothering with a small and heterogeneous group of women living in different areas of Santiago, Chile - and a follow-up study six years later - in this article we look closely at how mothering takes place through a sense of optimism while living in a hostile world, contrasting our findings with similar research in northern countries. Rather than waiting for opportunities to present themselves, women's sen…
Conociendo intimidades frágiles y esquivas de mujeres en Santiago más allá de los cuidados: Un Primer Intento
Si bien hace décadas se han desarrollado estudios acerca de los cambios contemporáneos en las configuraciones de la intimidad, en Chile se ha dado poca atención a los cambios en la intimidad de las mujeres, particularmente aquellas pertenecientes a estratos económicos bajos. Teniendo como base nuestras investigaciones etnográficas, y profundizando en las vidas de dos mujeres, en este artículo reflexionamos sobre el camino hacia la intimidad como …
Glimpses of agency
Previous articleNext article FreeGlimpses of agency Han, Clara. 2012. Life in debt: Times of care and violence in neoliberal Chile. Berkeley: University of California Press.Marjorie MurrayMarjorie MurrayPontificia Universidad Católica de Chile Search for more articles by this author Pontificia Universidad Católica de ChilePDFPDF PLUSFull TextEPUBMOBI Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked…
Childbirth in Santiago de Chile: Stratification, Intervention, and Child Centeredness
On the basis of ethnographic work with women from different economic and educational backgrounds in Santiago, I describe the experiences of labor and birth from the point of view of women's priorities, socioeconomic constraints, and relationships with the medical system. I specifically focus on their desires expressed during the late prenatal period and their narratives of the actual birth. Class and the differences in opportunities resulting fro…
Glimpses of agency
Previous articleNext article FreeGlimpses of agency Han, Clara. 2012. Life in debt: Times of care and violence in neoliberal Chile. Berkeley: University of California Press.Marjorie MurrayMarjorie MurrayPontificia Universidad Católica de Chile Search for more articles by this author Pontificia Universidad Católica de ChilePDFPDF PLUSFull TextEPUBMOBI Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked…
Parenting: Kinship, Expertise, and Anxiety
Americanae nace como un proyecto conjunto que surge dentro de la Red Europea de Información y Documentación sobre América Latina (REDIAL), y que ha afrontado la Biblioteca de la Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo (AECID). Esta nueva biblioteca virtual hace más accesibles los libros digitales de tema americanista a los investigadores y usuarios interesados de cualquier parte del mundo
Back to Work? Childcare Negotiations and Intensive Mothering in Santiago de Chile
In this article, I reflect on the negotiations involved in childcare arrangements during the first year of life in two groups of mothers in Santiago. I focus on the ways in which local imageries of motherhood interact with global tendencies in intensive mothering and the current public encouragement of increasing women's participation in the workforce. In this study, low-income and lower middle class women prioritize staying with the baby over th…
Apprehending Volition in Early Socialization: Raising "Little Persons" among Rural Mapuche Families
On the basis of ethnographic fieldwork with rural Mapuche families in the Araucanía region of Chile, this article analyzes ways in which Mapuche parenting practices and the process of socialization during early childhood involve and transmit a sense of volition that is intrinsic to Mapuche notions of personhood and autonomy. Recounting concrete daily events, we describe how children make use of their own initiative and intentionality when explori…
Hacia una ciencia social crítica. Entrevista a Didier Fassin
Care and Relatedness among Rural Mapuche Women: Issues ofCariñoand Empathy
Recounting concrete daily practices of mutual care-ayuda(help),estar atenta(being aware), andestar ahí(being there)-we examine the enactment and narratives of what these women labelcariño, or affection. We argue that these women's caring practices and sense ofcariñoare coherent with the acknowledged volitional and autonomic features of Mapuche personhood. We also claim that paying specific attention tocariñoprovides novel insight for an understan…
Ethical Challenges of Parenting Interventions in Low- to Middle-Income Countries
This article explores ethical issues raised by parenting interventions implemented in communities in low- to middle-income countries (LMICs) with rural, subsistence lifestyles. Many of these interventions foster "positive parenting practices" to improve children's chances of fulfilling their developmental potential. The practices are derived from attachment theory and presented as the universal standard of good care. But attachment-based parentin…
Personal autonomy, volition and participation during early socialization: A dialogue between the Lopi model and ethnographic findings in a Mapuche context ( Persona autónoma, volición y participación …
This article seeks to connect ethnographic findings from a study on parenting, childcare and early childhood in Chile’s Mapuche communities with facets of the LOPI model. From Facet 1, we observe that children are included in social situations from an early stage, which empowers them to learn how to interact through such instances as greeting others, commensality and hospitality, displaying will as well as motivation. From Facet 2, we highlight t…
Nobody’s Perfect: Making sense of a parenting skills workshop through ethnographic research in a low-income neighbourhood in Santiago de Chile
Nadie es Perfecto (Nobody’s Perfect, or NEP) is a parenting skills workshop aimed at ‘sharing experiences and receiving guidance on everyday problems to strengthen child development’. This article explores this workshop in terms of its relationship with the daily lives of participants, based on one year of fieldwork focused on families with young children in a low-income neighbourhood in Santiago. While caregivers frame their parenting efforts as…
Raising children in hostile worlds in Santiago de Chile: Optimism and 'hyper-agentic' mothers
Based on an ethnographic research on early mothering with a small and heterogeneous group of women living in different areas of Santiago, Chile - and a follow-up study six years later - in this article we look closely at how mothering takes place through a sense of optimism while living in a hostile world, contrasting our findings with similar research in northern countries. Rather than waiting for opportunities to present themselves, women's sen…
Ways of Not-Knowing in Neoliberal Chile: Notes Towards a Dark Anthropology
Through two significantly distinct ethnographic case studies, both based in Santiago, Chile, we argue for the need to attend to experiences which are not conceptualised by our interlocutors, or that remain ‘dark’ in terms of their ontological and representational properties. We point out that anthropology has been ill-equipped to deal with these ineffable margins, and point to conceptual arches which could be used transversally in what we call a …
More than mothers: Changing intimacies and relationships among low-income women in Chile
In Chile, low-income women who are mothers are confronted daily with a normative ideal that exacerbates them as caregivers, together with public demands and social policies that value their hyper-rationality and hyper-austerity in the management of their families. This emphasis on their reproductive roles obliterates their emerging sense of intimacy and significant relations. Based on three case studies, in this article, we reflect on urban low-i…
Conociendo intimidades frágiles y esquivas de mujeres en Santiago más allá de los cuidados: Un Primer Intento
Si bien hace décadas se han desarrollado estudios acerca de los cambios contemporáneos en las configuraciones de la intimidad, en Chile se ha dado poca atención a los cambios en la intimidad de las mujeres, particularmente aquellas pertenecientes a estratos económicos bajos. Teniendo como base nuestras investigaciones etnográficas, y profundizando en las vidas de dos mujeres, en este artículo reflexionamos sobre el camino hacia la intimidad como …
Critical reflexivities of women who cared for others during their childhood
This study examines the childhood care experiences of women between 20 and 30 years of age from low-income households in Santiago, Chile, by employing semi-structured interviews and qualitative analysis. At present, women understand their caregiving roles as older sisters, one which burdened them with agency practices, shaping critical reflections regarding the social organisation of care and influencing their present identity. They also articula…
Social Transformations during Infancy: Contributions through a Crisis-Oriented Lens
The Cambridge Handbook of Psychological Anthropology
Bringing together contributions from a global team of renowned scholars, this Handbook provides a comprehensive guide to the dynamic field of psychological anthropology. It is divided into five parts and includes a critical updating of the theoretical foundations for psychological anthropology, covering cognitive, psychodynamic, linguistic, and phenomenological views. It provides the first-ever lifespan perspective on human development in culture…
Care in translation: Girls, responsibilities, and local leadership in Southern Bahia
After years of limited impact and perceptions that its programs were externally imposed and reflected a north–south bias, the NGO where Marjorie conducted fieldwork in Southern Bahia sought local leadership to strengthen its community connections. Jacqueline, who grew up in the neighbourhood, assumed this role and reshaped the organization's workshops. This paper examines how her interpersonal skills and situated knowledge of local girls' lives e…
Cuidados en disolución y fronteras disciplinarias. Sufrimiento psíquico y zonas de indeterminación en Santiago de Chile
This article explores configurations of care that arise in contexts where psychic suffering fails to stabilize as a fully legible condition, either clinically or socially. Based onethnographic research in Santiago de Chile with two women whose life trajectories aremarked by persistent distress, eroded family ties, and ambivalent relationships withmental health institutions, we introduce the concept of care in dissolution. Drawinginspiration from …
Where the bullet lands: Violence, motherhood and the uneven terrain of citizenship in Chile
This article examines how citizenship is made and unmade in neoliberal Chile through the ethnographic case of Linda, a mother living in La Pintana, Santiago, whose nine-month-old son, Baltazar, was killed by a stray bullet while sleeping at home. Drawing on two years of fieldwork, press and institutional materials, we show how spectacular loss triggers ‘flash’ state care: a surge of visibility, political attention and assistance that temporarily …
Plurinationality as an empty signifier in the Chilean constitutional convention of 2021–2022: Recognition of difference and construction of the common
This article examines the history of plurinationality during the Chilean Constitutional Convention of 2021–2022 from an ethnographic perspective. Through the analysis of speeches, internal documents, and semi-structured interviews with Indigenous and non-Indigenous representatives, and drawing on Ernesto Laclau’s theory, we examine plurinationality and its evolution as an ‘empty signifier.’ Initially, plurinationality was presented by Indigenous …
The impacts of tourism, before, during and after the Covid pandemic: The case of Rapa Nui in the East Pacific
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the evolution of the tourism sector on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and its interaction with social transformations before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Design/methodology/approach The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with residents, tourism stakeholders and public authorities, complemented by participant observation and analysis of policy documents, official reports an…
Le quita el pecho a su hijo y se va a trabajar”: Estereotipos de indianidad y violencias históricas en la percepción de equipos de salud sobre la maternidad de migrantes bolivianas en Chile
Although the migration of women has gained increasing visibility in migration studies, little attention has been paid to the maternal experiences of Bolivian women who work in masculinized sectors such as agriculture and commerce. This article draws on research that explored maternal and child care practices among both health teams and migrant adults who entered Chile through irregular border crossings and were responsible for children and adoles…
Psychology (12 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Ethnography (8 works) · Political science (7 works) · Social Psychology (7 works) · Early Childhood Education and Development (6 works) · Developmental psychology (5 works) · Gender Studies (5 works) · Migration, Education, Indigenous Social Dynamics (5 works) · Humanities (4 works)