| This dissertation explores the experience of German immigrants to southern Chile's Lake District and the creation of German-Chilean identity as a distinctive ethnic construction within contemporary Chile. It examines the questions "What is 'German' in Chile?" and "How is German-ness perceived and performed by German-Chileans?".;My findings regarding this understudied community are based upon participant observation, archival research, audio recordings, interviews, and transcribed data which I collected during various trips to Chile between 1996 and 2003. My involvement with the community since 1972 also informs my investigation.;I argue that social actors construct and perform ethnic identity through meaningful behaviors. I use a semiotic analysis to examine the continuum of factors and expressions of German-Chilean (GC) identity. Chapters focus on mixed German-Spanish language style, the Bierfest event, and other GC behaviors that perform and construct identity and mark German-ness within Chile.;Today many GCs display behaviors that signal membership in the broader Chilean nation as well as membership in a distinctly GC ethnic community. I contend that culture mix is important to GC identity. I consider ways that social actors employ "German-ness" as "symbolic capital." I argue that GCs recognize competing value systems, a concept labeled "dinomia," when they idealize the norms, values, and lifestyle they associate with their ethnic ancestors as contrasted to the Chilean non-ethnic culture.;I begin with the geographic, social, and historic factors that encouraged German immigrants of 1850 through 1914 and their descendents to conserve German traditions within Chile. I explain how social and geographic isolation break down over time and contact with Spanish-speaking Chileans increased, and describe how the events associated with World War II and Nazi Germany affect the community. Within the context of cultural change, GCs encounter differences between themselves, non-German Chileans, and European-born Germans that stimulate the emergence and performance of GC ethnic identity. Today, however, GC youth are less loyal than their elders to an idealized past and the maintenance of its perceived traditions. Expressions of GC ethnic identity continue to undergo change. |
