An ethnographic look at the world of the deaf people: shared research experiences at the Núcleo de Antropologia Urbana

Abstract

The objective of this article is to resume the consolidation of research about deafness developed at the Núcleo de Antropologia Urbana at USP, under the coordination of professor José Guilherme Magnani. The focus of the text was mainly the steps that were parts of the ethnographic work of this topic that has been little researched in Anthropology. We described our first experiences, from a moment of complete ignorance and estrangement when faced with situations of incommunicability with deaf people, to the way in which, based on shared experiences with our interlocutors over the years, we developed general explanatory readings about the topic. As a result, we can state that, based on a systematic ethnography of the world of the deaf people, we have consolidated at NAU a rigorous analysis of the constitution of deafness affirmed as a linguistic and cultural particularity, highlighting both its normative aspect and the insistent heterogeneity of social practices.