Anthropological experiments between scientific and Amerindian knowledge

• Grant number: 13/50754-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: January 01, 2014
• End date: June 07, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Indigenous Ethnology
• Principal Investigator: Rui Sérgio Sereni Murrieta
• Grantee: Joana Cabral de Oliveira
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biociências (IB). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 14/13249-0 - Anthropological experiments between scientific and Amerindian knowledge, BE.EP.PD

Abstract

The main objective of this project is to instigate a reflection about plant subject in Amerindian ontologies, having as it epicenter an ethnographic research among the Wajãpi of Amapari (tupi-guarani group). This background would the guide a comparison with other ethnographic cases of Lowland South America. The proposal comprises also a dialogue with the actual botanical knowledge in order to establish nuances between this and the Wajãpi knowledge. A secondary focus of this proposal will be on the training of Wajãpi health agents and the dialogue between these indigenous agents and the biologists and veterinarians that are developing a research on leishmaniose in Wajãpi area. Those contexts would be an extraordinary opportunity to establish a relational comparison between both procedures of knowledge and its acquisition. This will help us to understand how knowledge is created and utilized by both epistemologies. It will also give a background and a feedback to an anthropological experiment allowing a dialogic reflection between the Wajãpi and the modem botanical knowledge. (AU)