From root to flour: an etnography of the beings and betweens of the production of cassava flour

• Grant number: 23/02188-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: July 01, 2023
• End date: June 30, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Fernanda Arêas Peixoto
• Grantee: Marina Gregori Tokita
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 20/07886-8 - Arts and semantics of creation and memory, AP.TEM

Abstract

The project has as its objective the analysis of the process of confection of cassava flour, which happens inside the so called "houses of flour" (casa de farinha), trying to understand what is produced during this process. The main hypothesis is that this is a complex dynamic process, capable of creating much more than just flour: also relations, beings and things. "Creation" here is understood in a wider sense, as a constitutive and articulator process of different ways of living and being in the world, in tune with the Thematic Project "Arts and Semantics of Creation and Memory" (2020/07886-8). Aligned with a pragmatic perspective, which privileges the investigation of practices and processes, this research must pay attention to techniques and rhythms, movements of the body and memory, trying to identify the presence of other beings, not only humans - such as the environment, tools, utensils, materials etc. - that integrate the production, along with the agencies established between them during the confection of the flour. All these agents are participants of the landscape, of the activities and of the exchange relationships that take place in a "house of cassava flour".