PARA ALÉM DA ESTÉTICA: UMA ABORDAGEM ETNOMATEMÁTICA PARA A CULTURA DE TRANÇAR CABELOS NOS GRUPOS AFRO-BRASILEIROS

Abstract

This study entitled " Beyond aesthetics: an etnomathematics approach to the culture of braiding hair Afro-Brazilian groups", is an ethnographic research and aims to investigate whether the practices and techniques of the braider Black women – in their act of thinking, architect, lay out and produce braids - constitute ethnomathematics practices. The methodology was based mainly on the Ethnomatematics and Cultural Anthropology. The methods and techniques of anthropological research were: field diary, participant observation, interviews, life history, oral history, and literature review. The Ethnomatematics was used to reflect on the scientific work in the West as a form of ideological manipulation, social exclusion, maintenance of political systems and social representations of the ruling class guided by a logic of intellectual inferiority (and knowledge) of certain social groups that are classified by class, race/ ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. The research sought to demonstrate that mathematics practiced in academia is a science produced within various perspectives skewed produced and reproduced to maintain the "status quo" of a colonial elite and has its origins in the Enlightenment formalist moviments. It was argued that mathematics can not be seen on universalistic aspects , since it is a human product related to the cognitive development of each culture is a cultural practice. We discussed and identified in the study the experience of black women in their doings Black women braiders/ knowledge as forms of mathematical knowledge invisible to Brazilian society. We address the practice of hair braiding as a memory held in the Brazilian black culture. Finally, the main research variables are gender, race, ethnicity, identity, black culture, knowledge, black women and mathematics.