Habitar saberes, cultivar territórios: extensão e práticas raizeiras como experiência de mundo

Abstract

This doctoral thesis analyzes extension practices developed in collaboration with traditional communities of the Cerrado region in the state of Goiás, Brazil, taking as its main reference the experience carried out with the raizeira (traditional healers) community of Pirenópolis-GO. The research addresses issues related to pedagogical practices, political conceptions, and ontological dimensions in the elaboration of knowledge. It is grounded in concrete experiences with raizeiros and raizeiras and engages in dialogue with Latin American critical — such as Mariza Peirano, Catherine Walsh, Arturo Escobar, Paulo Freire, Neusa Gusmão, and Aníbal Quijano — which contribute to reflections on the relationships between academic epistemologies and community knowledge. Anchored in the research line Ethnopolitics, Resistances, and Epistemological Transformations of the Graduate Program in Social Anthropology at the Federal University of Goiás (UFG), this dissertation proposes to understand university extension as a practice rooted in processes of coexistence, attentive listening, and recognition of other ways of producing knowledge, valuing territories and ways of life that resist colonial logics. It mobilizes the concepts of relational ontology, pedagogy of coexistence, and community epistemologies, proposing an interpretation of extension as a field of symbolic and political dispute within public educational institutions. Structured into five chapters, the research addresses, among other topics, the trajectory of the researcher as educator and extension practitioner; raizeiro knowledge as practices of resistance and care in the Cerrado territory; the institutional action of the Federal Institute of Goiás (IFG) in light of the new guidelines for extension; and the analysis of accounts of experiences developed between 2014 and 2023. Within this trajectory, particular emphasis is placed on the process of recognizing the knowledge and crafts of the raizeiros and raizeiras of Pirenópolis through the construction of an anthropological dossier, conceived as a methodological response to the emerging demands of the communities. Fieldwork was conducted based on principles of sensitive listening, prolonged immersion, and valuing affectivity in research relationships. The use of images, recordings, audiovisual materials, and oral narratives was essential in producing the ethnography, which takes the backyard, the Cerrado, and conversation circles as privileged epistemological spaces. The analysis shows that, despite institutional initiatives regarding the curricular integration of extension, there remain concrete challenges to the recognition and appreciation of traditional knowledge and to overcoming the effects of coloniality in educational spaces. The dissertation concludes by proposing that extension be understood as a world-making experience — a field in which knowledge, relationships, and politics are woven together to contribute to the formulation of more shared, plural, and territory-based educational practices. The pedagogy of coexistence, proposed in this study, is presented as an ethical and methodological horizon capable of reconfiguring the ties between school, community, and territory, grounded in reciprocity, recognition, and the collective construction of knowledge.