Social Cartography and the Defense of the Traditional Caiçara Territory of Trindade (Paraty, RJ, Brazil)

Participatory design of a smart forest in the Brazilian Amazon using smartphones, algorithms, and ethnographic methods

“…We will encourage crowdsourced, seasonal updating of these water routes based on community knowledge and daily life experiences in adapting to the changing riverbed topography, which is due to increasingly intensive and unexpected flooding brought about by climate change. As mentioned, using historical maps and new technologies, recent projects of social cartography in Brazil have sought to document, recognize, and systematize local knowledge, which is innovative, valuable, and immense work (e.g., Cortines et al., 2018; Milagres et al., 2020; Muniz, 2021). Our findings further corroborate earlier anthropological studies (e.g., Gómez‐Baggethun and Reyes‐García, 2013; Pearce et al., 2015) on the revision of local knowledge: as the residents in the focal forest reserve continuously observe and adapt to environmental changes in their daily lives, their TEK is constantly updated.…”

“…In collaboration with anthropologists, geographers, and other researchers, Indigenous, traditional, and Afro‐descendant communities adopted social‐cartography practices for their territorial defense, political organizing, and social movements, both in the Amazon (e.g., Bargas and Cardoso e Cardoso, 2015) and in other parts of Brazil (e.g., R. Almeida and Souza, 2017; Neves and Fialho, 2018). Other recent social‐cartography projects in Brazil have sought to document, recognize, and systematize local knowledge using historical maps, geographic information systems (GIS) science, and digital technologies (e.g., Cortines et al., 2018; Milagres, Ferreira Neto, and Sousa, 2020; Muniz, 2021). Later in this article, we critically reengage social‐cartography approaches.…”