Paper short abstract:

This paper analises two Ethnographic cases against the backgrounds of Indigenous Renaissance phenomena and Brazilian democratization of universities. It argues that alternative Anthropological teaching strategies are essential to fully achieve the reflexive and political potential of the discipline.

Paper long abstract:

Based on two ethnographic cases, this paper debates the importance of alternative Anthropological teaching strategies, as a tool to achieve the full reflexive and political potential of the discipline. The first ethnographic case is based on one of the author's experience as a professor of Anthropology at the State University of Mato Grosso, in Nova Xavantina, a small town of Central Brazil. The second happened ten years before that, when the other author was a Brazilian Exchange Student of Anthropology at the University of Bologna in Italy. In dialogue with scholars who critically reflect about Anthropology´s Colonial routs, we argue that the traditional method of teaching the discipline, anchored on the duality between the "We and Them", has not yet been overcome in practice. Although these routs have already been repeatedly and strongly criticized, they still guide the mainstream teaching practice of Anthropology. In the paper, the theoretical, methodological and political threats posed by these Colonial routs will be analyzed against the following backgrounds. Firstly, the Brazilian democratization of universities, a process that took place in the last twenty years and allowed the inclusion of people of different races, colors, ethnicities, classes, and/or world experiences, which have been historically marginalized. Another important background is the recent phenomena of "Indigenous Renaissance", which points out the enhancement of Original Populations' centrality as political actors in global debates. Both these backgrounds make it urgent to investigate and debate new ways of critically teaching, producing, consuming and evaluating anthropolical knowledge as Political Action.