Elementos de etnografia Mbyá

This work seeks to present ethnographic data concerning the Guarani Mbyá from the Tekoá Ytu and Tekoá Pyaú indigenous lands, located near the Jaraguá State Park in the capital city of São Paulo.Elements pertaining to social organization, kinship, and leadership are given priority, constituting the basis of this ethnography.The indigenous Mbyá leaders are thus seen as a privileged locus for observing relations internal to the indigenous group, relations between kinship groups, among different indigenous lands and with non-indigenous people.Their opinions, classifications and ordering of identities and alterities produced in these relations are described and put in dialogue with the classic and contemporary Mbyá ethnology.In conclusion, I discuss the pertinence of exploring the notion of the tekó ("way of being") Guarani to understanding the sociocultural constructs of this indigenous group and suggest the importance of this notion to the Mbyá cosmovision.I also include a bibliographic survey of academic research (Thesis and Dissertations) focused on the Guarani.There are almost two-hundred monographic works from different areas of knowledge and different educational and research institutes in Brazil, from the decade of 1980 on.I present an analysis of some information gathered from this survey, observing the exponential expansion of studies concerning the Guarani during the last decades

Ethnography · Ethnology · Geography · Indigenous · Kinship · Sociocultural evolution · Sociology · Amazonian Archaeology and Ethnohistory · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Indigenous Health and Education · Indigenous Studies in Latin America · Ecology