Chapter 9: (Ethno)Mathematics as Discourse

Ethnomathematics can refer to different practices that include mathematics.¹ It can also refer to a research approach, and one can talk about the ethnomathematical research program.² In this chapter, I will concentrate on ethnomathematics as referring to a variety of practices. Although including some remarks about ethnomathematics as a research programme.

Several ethnomathematical studies indicate a duality between ethnomathematics and academic mathematics. On the one hand, academic mathematics has been described as a dominant regime of truths, which defines standards according to which other ways of thinking about numbers, magnitudes, forms, space, and time, become inadequate, if not simply wrong. Ethnomathematics, on the other hand, is described as integrated in many different everyday practices and as being made part of lived-through cultured values. While academic mathematics becomes characterized mainly through negative terms, ethnomathematics is presented in mainly positive.