Ethnomathematics: Legitimizing the link
between Mathematics and Culture
Swapna MukhopadhyayGraduate School of EducationPortland State University
Oregon NAME Conference Oregon State University, Corvallis,
OR.
Swapna MukhopadhyaySHOPNA
MUKHO-PADTHAI
Kolam
Lusona (Sona, plural)
Shipibo
Tlingit, Alaska
Alaska Native Languages
Tlingit map
August 24, 2006
Quilts by women ~ 1940- 2000. Gee’s Bend, Alabama.
“ No people… however hard their lives may be, spend all their time, all their energies in the acquisition of food and shelter … Even the poorest tribes have produced work that gives them esthetic pleasure …[they] devote much of their energy to the creation of works of beauty…No matter how diverse the ideals may be, the general character of the enjoyment of beauty is of the same order everywhere.” Franz Boas (1927). Primitive Art. New York: Dover
What is Ethnomathematics?
…the mathematics practiced among identifiable cultural groups, such as national-tribal societies, labor groups, children of certain age bracket, professional classes, and so on. Its identity depends largely on focuses of interest, on motivation, and on certain codes and jargons which do not belong to the realm of academic mathematics.
D’Ambrosio, 1985
ethno + mathema + tics = ethnomathematics
ethno - within a cultural environmentmathema - explaining and understanding in order to transcend, managing and coping with reality in order to survive and thrivetics - techniques such as counting, ordering, sorting, measuring, weighing, ciphering, classifying, inferring, and modeling.
D’Ambrosio, 2001.
Cultural anthropology
Cultural history
Mathematics
Ethnomathematics
Connecting to the museum as a resource
A field trip to the local museum.
• Pre-museum activity
• Semi-structured fieldwork
• Post-museum activity
• Curricular follow-up
MathematicsCultural artifact
Alternative forms of knowledge construction
Translation
Mirror Mirror MirrorReflection
In preparation…
Mirror
Rotation
Reflection
Glide
Translation
Reflection
Rotation
Glide
In a patterned weave, the pattern is generated by working one row at a time –like stacking layers of disembedded patterns in a row.
Without a routinzed algorithm, the weaver relies heavily on her capacity of visualizing the entire pattern, breaking down each layer of it, keeping a counting sequence as well as the ability to visually predict the entire sequence of pattern and self-correct counting mistakes made.
RRRRRR
R R
RRR RR
R R R R
R O
OO OO OO
OOOOOOOO
OO OO O
OO OO O
OO OO OO
A few comments
“When making this kind of art, thinking about math is unavoidable. The project makes art and math synonymous.”
“Do not teach an ethnocentric curriculum.”
“And if nothing else, the museum can serve as a humbling experience”.
“…striking interplay of art and function.”
“ … amazing connection to the globalized world.”
“Ethnomathematics encourages us to witness and struggle to understand how mathematics continues to be culturally adapted and used by people around the planet and throughout the time.” D’Ambrosio, 2001.
The intellectual activity of those without power is always characterized as non-intellectual. (Freire & Macedo, (1987), Literacy. Reading the word and the world, p. 188. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey)
