The ethnomathematics posture as a political blow: unveiling the mysticism of five rhythms present in communitarian Mathematics Education
Keywords:
Ethnomathematics Posture, Communitarian Mathematics Education, Local Knowledge, Urban Boundaries, Human TopologyAbstract
In a dialectical movement, the very mysticism that operates the existing educational processes has been treated with deep mysticism in the academy. The paths that unravel this mysticism have been avoided, or even denied, both as an alibi that questions the scientific credibility of the study and as a discourse that rescues knowledge unworthy to human progress and success. To demystify, this essay presents an analysis on some research processes developed with multi-marginalized communities. The analysis begins with an overview of the bottom-up processes of human development in Europe, and opens up to research experiences both in Portugal and in Brazil, by supporting the establishment of a methodological theoretical structure that is transversal to these research experiences. An ethnomathematics posture rooted in critical ethnographic movements, and developed with a bottom-up research, promotes not only the possibility of breaking with the mysticism surrounding inter and intra-communitarian processes but also of witnessing the dance of communitarian bodies to the beat of five rhythms: cultural identity, self-governing, corporification, identification, and multicultural racism. These rhythms have revealed themselves as pivotal concepts in the development of communitarian mathematics education, and are here discussed in terms of transformation, emancipation, and civility that are objectified and conquered by means of this research, going beyond the hyper-valuation of the identity of microcommunitarism.
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