Title

Indigenous students at Unicamp and UFSCar: experiences through the lens of ethnograph

Abstract

The objective of the research is to carry out an articulated set of ethnographies with indigenous students enrolled in regular courses at Unicamp and UFSCar. The same attention given to indigenous students will also be accorded to professors, employees, administrators, and other university students who interact with them: the focus will be on the relationships and processes of cultural mediation produced by the different actors. What image are indigenous students invited to present publicly when they are in university? How do different groups of students respond to these invitations and what do they propose independently of university’s encouragements? The research will not seek, therefore, to characterize what would be "the culture" of one or of the different indigenous groups that attend an institution and how "the meeting of culture(s)" between students and institution would take place, but rather to describe the discourses and practices around terms, themes, or claims that emerge from these relationships (such as “intercultural dialogue”, “ancestral knowledge”, “indigenous epistemologies”, etc.). Authors of pragmatic sociology who analyze the conditions of possibility of the emergence in the public space of a “cause” contribute to understanding the situation. Literature in Sociology of Education, in studies of low-income students entering selective higher education institutions, is equally mobilized, allowing a close look to social class dynamics, inequalities, and challenges in the appropriation of the "legitimate" culture (Bourdieu) that indigenous students may have in common with students from popular classes.

Team

Chantal Medaets (coordinator), José Maurício Arruti (associate researcher), Antônio Guerreiro (associate researcher, professor at IFCH/ Unicamp), Elise Capredon (associate researcher, professor at Univ. Lyon 2), Juliana Jodas (associate researcher, Ph.D. in Anthropology/ Unicamp ), Marina Romero (IC Fellow, Social Science Undergraduate), Iandra Moretti (IC Fellow, Social Science Undergraduate).  

Financing

Young Researcher Program - FAPESP