A Historical Narrative of Ethnomathematics

The history of Ethnomathematics is, in many ways, closely associated with the life and work of Ubiratan D’Ambrosio and, in particular, it is assumed that it is inseparable from its textual production. One of the objectives of this work is to highlight some aspects related to the ways in which this history of ethnomathematics was written and, later, inscribed in the world of D’Ambrosio’s ethnomatmatic text. The methodology of analysis and interpretation is inspired by the narratology and hermeneutics of the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur. The guiding thread of the investigation is the composition of the intrigue (plot) of the narrative of the stories and, in this context, some elements were observed, such as, for example, the characters, the voices of the narrative, the scenarios and spaces of the action, the relationships among the characters, some speech functions (poetic and rhetorical) and the effects intended by the speech. The research showed that the history of ethnomathematics written by D’Ambrosio is based on intertextuality, rhetoric and fictional literature.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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The datasets used in this study are openly available at [repository link] and the source code is available on GitHub at [GitHub link].

This work did not receive any external funding.