Voices of abyssal thinking: a communication ethnographic study in Mendonça Potiguara indigenous community
Indigenous; Invisibility; abyssal thinking; Sociology of communication; Sociology of culture.
This investigation proposes an ethnographic communicational study with the Mendonça Potiguara people located in Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. We focus on the communicative processes in their physical world and also its relationship with digital environment. We follow an ethnography of the south wich is based on Boaventura Santos theories. We identified communicative practices based on the communicational ethnography that we performed in the community. We analyzed how digital tools have been used by that group focusing on their Facebook pages: Santa Terezinha Povo Mendonça Potiguara Indigenous Community and Amarelão em Foco blog. We examined the social networks of indigenous leaders during Brazilian presidential elections. Also, we observed Chestnut Festival as a communicational process. After a investigative study and based on the concept of virtual bios (SODRÉ, 2009) we raised the hypothesis that indigenous immersion in virtuality and their adherence to cyberspace implies a new qualification of life. The abyssal theory is described by Santos (2009) as a social invisibility field where suppression forces are acting against inhabitants of this social space. This is the sociological context where indigenous are inserted. With that perspective in mind, we aim to unveil how communicative practices arising from the actions of the abyssal inhabitants cause fissures in the radical line.