KNOWLEDGE, TRAJECTORIES AND SOCIAL SPACE: reflective ethnography among quilombola communities

Abstract

The ethnographic research proposed to carry out an ethnographic sketch of the quilombola communities in the middle of the sertão of Maranhão, paying attention to the intrinsic elements of knowledge production. As methodological support, the interlocutions followed the bias of studies that privilege alterities and local knowledge as fundamental analytical assumptions. In this perspective, we seek to move away from most studies aimed at quilombola communities that focus on land struggles and recognition of rights as a central approach, however, we understand that these approaches were fundamental to foster the discussions on screen. The quilombola communities surveyed here were only certified by the Palmares Foundation in 2006, but for more than half a century these communities have maintained sociability relations and cultural exchanges. Nevertheless, our search for knowledge is based on knowledge, trajectories and conceptions of social space (territory) referenced in ecosophy. In this way, we will try to capture the processes of cosmopolitical, sociocosmological and anthropological creativity, emphasizing their own elaboration and construction of concepts. To that end, fieldwork was an extremely important methodological tool, combined with other methodologies, for example, oral history, ethnohistory and care for local language, fundamental elements inherent to the social sciences.

Keywords: Quilombola, Cosmopolitical, Maranhão