Archives 1996–2012 de l’ancienne équipe REHSEIS
Laboratoire SPHERE – UMR 7219

All of these mathematical activities can be though of as immaterial scientific culture, that is important to study and preserve, because they are disappearing. We would like to analyze them in a framework that belongs partly to anthropology and for an other to history, reflecting on how these activities belong to scholarly mathematics. This project thus belongs to two of the main themes of this ACI, the promotion of scientific culture and the history of knowledge. Studying mathematical activities of small groups, out of Europe, living in non-urban areas can bring us to have turn a new eye on mathematics and the elaboration of specialized knowledge in a larger way.

We hope to produce a scholarly publication but also documents for a larger public : radio programs, documentaries and exhibits, all aiming at looking at mathematics through a new eye. We have thus associated to our work a film maker and an association.

Cyrille Benamou has already made several movies, particularly les frères Vache : quotidien d’un paysan dans la drome, which was projected on the TV channel France 2 in 2002. He is now finishing a movie called Robert et François on the French film maker François Truffaut and is preparing a documentary on gipsy communities in Europe. Cyrille Benamou has both studied anthropology and mathematics and is thus especially sensitive to our project.

The Inuksuk association works with the National Institut of Oriental Languages (Inalco) the Inuit Art Galery and un regulary with Unesco. It aims to promote Inuit culture in Europe through publications, exhibits, documentaries and animations. Its active members are mainly INALCO students, and sometimes anthropologists. They often publish together.

The association has a space where an exhibit on string games and animations relating to it as an ethnomathematical object will be held. Conferences and projections can also me held there.

Ethnomathematics is a new theme of research, working on objects that are about to disappear. We really hope that the ACI “scientific creation” will enable us to carry out a project which works to preserve these objects and understand them.

Bibliography

[Alvarez-Pereyre, Frank 2003]
L’exigence interdisciplinaire , Editions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, 240p.

[Ascher, Marcia 1988]
Graphs in Cultures : A Study in Ethnomathematics , Historia Mathematica 15, p. 201-227.

[Ascher, Marcia 1991]
Ethnomathematics : A Multicultural View of mathematical Ideas , Brooks/Cole Publishing Compagny. Pacific Grove, California, 199p – Traduction française, Mathématiques d’ailleurs : nombres, formes et jeux dans les sociétés traditionnelles, par Karine Chemla et Serge Pahaut, Editions du Seuil, 1998, 280p.

[Ascher, Marcia 2002]
Mathematics Elsewhere : An exploration of ideas across cultures, Princeton University Press, 201 p.

[Huret, Pauline 2003]
Les Inuit de l’Arctique canadien , textes recueillis par Pauline Huret, éd. AFI/Inuksuk, 266p.

[Mimica, Jadran 1988]
Intimations of infinity : the mythopoeia of the Iqwaye counting system and number , New York, Berg Publishers, 188p.

[Senft, Gunter et Senft, Barbara 1986]
Ninikula Fadenspiele auf den trobriand inseln Papua New Guinea , Baessler-Archiv –34(1)
p.93-235

[Victor, Paul-Emile 1940]
Contributions à l’Ethnographie des Eskimos d’Angmagssalik par Paul-Emile Victor , Meddelelser om Gronland 125 n°7, Copenhagen, 212p.