Reflections on mathematical figures and engineering approaches in anthropology

Abstract

This paper presents and discusses some examples of how mathematical figures and engineering approaches can be detected in anthropological theorizing and how a mathematical reading of certain anthropological theories is possible and sometimes fruitful. The paper proceeds in three steps: a comparison between experimental measuring and engineering “black boxing” as different ways of representing ethnographic reportage and anthropological theorizing; a discussion of feedback loops in anthropological theorizing; and a discussion of chaos theory and fractal geometry and some of their uses in anthropological writing. I finish by hinting at the fruitfulness of making allies across disciplinary boundaries given our anthropocenic predicaments and limitations in our cross disciplinary analogies.

Não binariedade emergente ou binariedade projetiva – reflexões exploratórias transdisciplinares

“…Segundo Kelly (2022) (1976). Por outro lado, uma abordagem geométrica nos parece muito mais recente, fruto de uma discussão que visa escapar da simplicidade exagerada de um binário de gênero, mas sem se limitar explicitamente pela próxima aproximação que seria a de um espectro unidimensional (Balsells, 2022;Costa;Lugarinho, 2022).…”

Practices, themes and problems of anthropology in the present: global perspectives and critical contexts in the contemporary world - a mosaic

“…The mosaic of anthropological work refracted here also includes dialogues with fields of knowledge such as engineering and mathematics (Kelly, 2022), the interactions between sensory experiences in music and the use of audiovisual media (Villela, 2022), or the exploration of the urban, a privileged thematic area in Brazilian anthropology as elsewhere, here set in dialogue with sociology and especially geography (Espinosa, 2022). These reflections are complemented by others on science in general (Marini & Marras, 2022) and anthropology in particular, whose historical trajectories are explored by João de Pina-Cabral in a shrewd essay (Pina-Cabral, 2022) surveying a new collection of books and, especially, the diversity of the discipline's contemporary practices.…”