Subject: Re: [HM] Warlpiri/Malekula and groups
From: Michael Deakin (michael.deakin@sci.monash.edu.au)
Date: Tue Sep 26 2000 - 02:36:03 EDT
This question has long been a concern of mine. I suppose that I, like Dr
Grabiner's colleague, am a strong skeptic in this area.
In June 1997, I devoted my History of Mathematics column in the journal
"Function" to a questioning of the Ethnomathematics movement. [Function
is a journal of School Mathematics; see
http://www.maths.monash.edu.au/~cristina/function.html
It has also carried at least one major article on the other side of the
debate. My own article appeared in Vol 21, Part3, pp 89-94; for a
contrary view, see Hans Lausch's article on Arunta [Arrernte] kinship
systems in Vol 14, Part 3, pp 22-27 (1990). This latter article has been
reproduced and translated, and so has had quite a wide currency.
My own article initiated some correspondence with Marcia Ascher, and we
ended up simply having to agree to differ.
But my view then was (and still remains):
"...it was the author of the article who supplied the mathematics. _We_
may find it implicit in theclan structure of the Arunta, but this is not
the same thing as saying that the Arunta are engaging in group
theoretical discourse."
To answer the precise question posed by Dr Grabiner's colleague: I think
it highly unlikely that any member of either the Warlpiri or the Malekula
has ever undertaken specialist studies in abstract algebra.
Mike Deakin
Judy Grabiner <jgrabine@pitzer.edu> wrote:
>
> A colleague, who was reading Marcia Ascher's Ethnomathematics for
> the first time, asked me the following question about members of
> those societies whose kinship systems are describable by group theory
> (e.g., the Warlpiri and Malekula as discussed by Ascher, or any of
> the societies which are discussed by Levi-Strauss and whose kinship
> systems were algebraically analyzed by Andre Weil):
>
> Have any members of these societies gone on to universities and
> studied modern algebra, and, if so, did understanding their own
> kinship systems help or influence their study of algebra?
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