Multispecies ethnology and indigenous primatology: more-than-human forms of production and protection of forests in Maranhão

• Grant number: 23/10478-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: September 01, 2023
• End date: December 31, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Indigenous Ethnology
• Principal Investigator: Fernanda Arêas Peixoto
• Grantee: Maria Lua Vieira Lara
• 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

This research seeks to address conceptual, theoretical and ethnographic issues of anthropology, based on the analysis of two areas of study that are in a "neighborhood" relationship. On the one hand, South American indigenous ethnology and, on the other hand, research interested in: (1st) multispecific and interspecific relationships (2nd) human and non-human interactions from an anthropological perspective and (3rd) the place of indigenous cosmologies in the so-called Anthropocene. Despite being a project in indigenous ethnology, this proposal, provoked by issues that arise within the scope of this thematic project, seeks to approach studies linked to the so-called "multispecies ethnographies" (Kirksey and Helmreich, 2010; van Dooren, Kirksey and Münster, 2016 ), whose main postulate resides precisely in removing the centrality of the human from social theory. The interweavings between the Awá Guajá and some species of primates that sometimes appear as prey animals, sometimes as domesticated animals, will be the empirical focus of this research.