Natural behavior produced by scientists: ethnography of elephant sanctuaries in Brazil and Mozambique

• Grant number: 19/07570-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: October 01, 2019
• End date: July 31, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Anna Catarina Morawska Vianna
• Grantee: Ana Cecília Oliveira Campos
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Considering practices that produce species conservation in times of global connections, this research project is concerned with investigating how the notion of natural behavior is constructed in an international elephant conservation network, Elephant Voices. To do so, two of his projects, the Gorogonsa Elephant Project (GEP), in the Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique, and the Brazilian Elephants Sanctuary (SEB), in the Chapada dos Guimarães, in Mato Grosso, will be ethnographed. At GEP, researchers are dedicated to understanding the effects of years of unbridled hunting on the behavior of elephants that currently live in a safe and ample location. In SEB, biologists seek to assess the effects of circus work on elephant behavior and develop practices to encourage those perceived as natural. It is interesting in this research to think how scientists construct the notion of elephant natural behavior and how they encourage it for the conservation of species. More broadly, the research seeks to destabilize the concept of nature as associated with the innate, through the description of the practices that produce what is considered proper to the nature of elephants. It also seeks to describe how the notion of natural behavior connects institutions, scientists and elephants in two very different ethnographic contexts. (AU)

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

CATARINA MORAWSKA; ANA CECÍLIA CAMPOS; BRUNO CAMPOS CARDOSO; CARLOS PAULINO. A TRANSVERSALIDADE ENTRE CIÊNCIAS SOCIAIS E ÁREAS TECNOLÓGICAS: por uma ecologia das práticas na política científica nacional. Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais, v. 36, n. 107, 2021-06-04. (19/07570-3)