From an anthropological perspective, this research investigates the possible relations between scientific and “traditional” systems of knowledge. It focuses on a particular story of co-laboration woven by primatologists, capuchin monkeys, and a rural family in the state of Piauí, in Northeastern Brazil. The researchers come from the Southeast region of the country and are mostly affiliated with the University of São Paulo (USP), alongside primatologists from the United States and Italy. Focusing on behavioral studies of robust capuchin monkeys (Sapajus libidinosus), especially regarding the monkeys’ tool-use traditions and their socio-psychological development, these researchers have worked in this region for more than twenty years.
One of the local families—inhabitants and owners of the land on which the capuchin monkeys live—has been hired by the researchers over these years. They are responsible for maintaining a research station and collecting the animals’ behavioral data throughout the year, even when primatologists are not on site. This co-laboration, common in the biological sciences, is intertwined with a longer ecological and political history of the region, in which actors such as drought, conservationists, macaws, large-scale soy agribusiness, and national development policies have played a role.
In this context, this dissertation aims (1) to elaborate a history of this primatological research, informed by the ethnographic investigation, examining the different stories that constitute this co-laboration and (2), taking seriously the task of an anthropology of science, to reflect on what “science” means for the actors involved in this research project. More specifically, I am interested in what the labor and knowledge of these field experts from the local rural community can reveal about the sciences and how they might modify modern and anthropological accounts of what scientific knowledge is—or should be.