The ethnographic experience: about to inhabit and be inhabited by the Apyãwa world

Abstract

This text was organized with the purpose of discussing methodological aspects of research developed around the theme “Indigenous Time Markers”, under the view of Ethnomatematics Research Program. In this work, I explained my own perceptions about the ethnography and the construction process of my view about the Apyãwa community. It explains my choices, methodological positions and their justifications as well. My assumptions are based on the understanding of culture as a symbolic web, woven into the relationship between the ethos and the world view of some people (which when woven, establishes links, sticking to it. Produces, socializes and updates their knowledge) whose analysis raises the ethnography, as a way to describe and interpret the flow of social discourse of these culture members. The ethnographic text is presented as a discourse produced by the ethnographer with the task of making plausible the realities of different cultures. To practice ethnography with the Apyãwa people represented the possibility of realizing the cultural web being woven; of participating in a historical period of knowledge being produced, updated and taught as an intrinsic part of their cultural practice and to hear narratives that explain and justify this practice. Ultimately, it was the possibility to contemplate, in all this complexity, nuances of personality, the way they interact with each other and with the environment in which they live, that constitute the Apyãwa people and distinguishes them as a cultural group.

Keywords:
Ethnomatematics; Indigenous culture; World view; Ethos; Cultural practices