Abstract

MICARELLI, Giovanna. Research in an enchanted world: the contributions of indigenous methodologies to ethnographic practice. univ.humanist. [online]. 2018, n.86, pp.219-245. ISSN 0120-4807.  https://doi.org/10.11144/javeriana.uh86.imei.

Based on the methodologies of the indigenous Gente de Centro (People of the Center) of the Colombian Amazon, this essay seeks to replace a notion of ethnographic practice as a set of techniques for data extraction, with a commitment with other cognitive practices that accepts the ways in which knowledge is produced and validated locally. Through the narrative of two indigenous research projects, the text suggests that the disenchanted modern method -with its “semi-structured interviews”, focus groups, and data collection designs- is inadequate to account for a world where everything speaks, and does so in unexpected ways. At the same time, the warning of indigenous people to monitor the effects of knowledge on the world compels us to assume a responsible attitude towards the world that the act of knowing produces, or can produce. The question is how do these methodologies, emerging from intercultural dialogue, contribute to decolonize the ethnographic work?

Keywords : indigenous methodologies and epistemologies; Colombian Amazon; Gente de Centro.

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