From the idea of mixture to its denial: structure and transformation among the Tupi Guarani and Mbya

• Grant number: 14/26748-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: May 01, 2015
• End date: December 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Indigenous Ethnology
• Principal Investigator: Marina Vanzolini Figueiredo
• Grantee: Rodrigo Rossi Mora Brusco
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research project proposes the fulfillment of a literature review that provides elements to analyze the cultural and linguistic threshold between the Tupi Guarani and Mbya, two Guarani subgroups (the first one only recently known through this name), focusing the different valuations that these two collectives have of the native concept of "mixture". As revealed by the recent ethnological literature, if the Tupi Guarani desire the "mixture", whether with non-indigenous, whether with other indigenous groups, the Mbya reject it, avoiding the alliance formation with non-indigenous. From this observation, the hypothesis to be developed with this research is that such difference could be understood through the notion of structural transformation, as proposed by Claude Lévi-Strauss, allowing us to understand these different conceptions as versions of one another. Given the brevity of the research in Scientific Initiation, and considering that the hypothesis that we propose can only be actually verified through a long field research, the objective of this project is to invest in the reading of works that shall allow us to complexify, refine and eventually change our initial intuitions, with a view of a future fieldwork.