Colaboração nas entrelinhas: os mateiros de ontem e de hoje e o papel dos conhecimentos tradicionais para o desenvolvimento da pesquisa científica na Amazônia

Abstract

This paper addresses and contextualizes the role and importance of a series of historically neglected social agents, known in the current context as woodsmen/boaters/ fishermen/climbers and others, responsible for the construction and production of knowledge through their collaborative efforts along countless scientific undertakings carried out in the Amazon territory. Through an anthropological focus, at first, these social agents are situated in their historical place, gradually conquered over an extensive lineage of professionals responsible for providing an interface between explorers coming from “outside” and the “local” environment since the first foreign ventures in the Amazon. Then, from an ethnographic perspective, the realities experienced by woodsmen “of today” are addressed, attempting to see the history of scientific research developed in the region from the perspective of their unique points of view, often disregarded in the “official” historical reports. Finally, are brought to discussion the parameters currently used to “measure”, “evaluate” and “classify” knowledge systems, “qualifications” and “capacities” outside the sphere of “scientific legitimacy” and the deep and asymmetric hierarchies derived from a social context based on ethnocentric principles that perpetuate inequality and exclusion.