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String Figure database project

This database has been initiated as part of the project "Les jeux de ficelle: aspects culturels et cognitifs d'une pratique à caractère mathématique" (2011-2016), funded by the city of Paris (Emergences 2011)

It will be completed as part of the ANR funded project ETKnoS (2016-2020): Encoding and Transmitting Knowledge with a String : a comparative study of the cultural uses of mathematical practices in string-figure making (Oceania, North & South America)

This project focuses on the practice of "string-figure making" which consists in carrying out a succession of operations using the fingers, to obtain a figure from a loop of string. Known in numerous societies with an oral tradition (notably in Oceania and the Americas), and often identified as a recreational activity, this practice brings into play gestural sequences similar to algorithms concurrently with the enunciation of terms and even specific stories (or chants).

The overall aim of this project is to understand the mathematical dimension of such a practice (and particularly the expression of a mathematical rationality associated with it), by considering its place in particular cultural (and linguistic) contexts. Through a dual ethnomathematical and anthropological perspective, and based on ethnographies and ethnolinguistic analysis to be carried out in Oceanian (Vanuatu, and Trobriand), South American (Mapuche, Guarani-Ñandeva) and North American (principally Inuit) societies, the proposed study aims more specifically to investigate the relationships between the sequences of operations (procedures and sub-procedures) and the words that are spoken or sung during these sequences. Our objective is to reach a better understanding of the extent to which, in these societies, the practice of string-figure making constitutes/constituted a method for the organization and the transmission of knowledge (mythological, cosmological, sociological, geographical, etc.), involving the use of mathematical concepts.

To further the comparative treatment of the data collected, this database will bring together videos, sound recordings, written descriptions and comments relating to the string figures known in the (corpuses of the) different societies studied. Developed with original tools (digital coding of the procedures written in symbolic writing), this database will aim to show more particularly the internal structure of each corpus.

This database is published through an open-source and interoperable software framework (Omeka), and designed to provide educational resources and guidelines for teaching mathematics – as ingrained in a traditional cultural practice – initially to indigenous students in the societies considered in the research project. As the database's content (which will highlight mathematical concepts expressed through string figure processes) will be available English - and later on in Spanish -, it could also be used more widely for pedagogical purposes in mathematics education, and particularly for promoting a comparative perspective on mathematical practices and ideas.