Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 4.10. Guarani Pajé Cândido Ramirez and wife, at their new village near Praia
Dura, municipality of Ubatuba, northern coast of São Paulo state, 2005.
also used in mathematics; those whom you love or your relations for whom you have
compassion collaborate to distribute fairly the gains of the community.”
2
Various
considerations were then advanced about the division of foodstuffs that are in fact
made in accordance with the principles of reciprocity that orient an economy of gift-
exchange (Mauss 1990); among them the relationship to family members, health,
age, and prestige. Dividing up meat from a hunt, for example, involves precise
estimations and calculations. Participants acknowledged that many times you don't
divide up parts equally because some houses have more members or the elders are
privileged. Or sometimes the family of the hunter has more of a right to certain
hunting grounds. These and other multiple factors often enter into consideration, as
well as previous debts, power, status, and emotions.
Educators brought up the fact that the great majority of mathematics topics used
in Brazilian schools present arithmetic operations in this order: addition in the first
place and division in the last. This seems to be self-explanatory as addition is the
mathematical form most easy and “natural” to learn. To divide should be the last, as
it is the most difficult and requires an existing understanding of all other operations.
This is a technical question that does not take into consideration cultural and political
meanings behind concepts of “more” and “less,” and “divide” and “multiply.”
The ways in which goods are distributed in basically egalitarian societies, such
as the Indigenous communities we are talking about, determine that when someone
gives something to someone, the giver won't necessarily become dispossessed of
those items or have “less” goods. On the contrary, the giver is usually put in a position
