Reflective ethnography and mapping of otherness in quilombolas communities: knowledge, trajectories and social spaces

Abstract

The research proposed to carry out an ethnographic sketch of four quilombola communities in the middle of the hinterland of Maranhão, paying attention to the intrinsic elements of knowledge production. Methodologically, we followed approaches that privilege alterities and local knowledge as fundamental analytical assumptions. The Palmares Foundation only certified the quilombola communities surveyed here in 2006, but these communities have maintained sociability relations and cultural exchanges for more than half a century. We aimed to capture the cosmopolitical, socio-cosmological, and anthropological creativity processes and emphasize how they elaborate and construct their concepts. To this end, fieldwork was a methodological tool of paramount importance, combined with other methodologies inherent to the social sciences.