Anthropologist celebrating 50 years at USP took daughters to villages – 03/11/2024 – Education

One of the milestones in anthropologist Sylvia Caiuby Novaes’ 50-year career as a professor at USP was taking her daughters, over three decades, to her field research in the Bororo indigenous village, in Mato Grosso. She considers this experience vital for her career and left an important legacy for Laura, 45, Isabel, 43, and Camila, 33.

The longest-serving female professor at FFLCH (Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences), at USP, states that making difficult decisions after motherhood is a particularity of female researchers because there is a complicated need to choose between working or being a mother.

She chose both. Despite being married at the time to the father of her three daughters, an aeronautical engineer, Sylvia traveled alone with them.

“I didn’t want to stop doing field research. Taking them with me was an excellent option, a remarkable experience for them. They potty-trained and traveled. It wasn’t a difficult choice. It would be difficult to leave them here [em SP] and send me to travel. It was a successful strategy that didn’t make me feel guilty.”

But Sylvia’s story with USP began much earlier, in 1968, when she entered as a social sciences student on Rua Maria Antônia, which was then the scene of protests by students from various schools and universities against the military dictatorship.

Being a teacher didn’t even cross the anthropologist’s mind when she graduated in 1971. She traveled the world and, upon returning, became a monitor at USP. Until one of her teachers invited her to teach anthropology. Sylvia, who until then only had a bachelor’s degree, was hired as a teacher on March 14, 1974.

That same year, she began her research with the indigenous Bororo people. Years later, she took her daughters to the villages of Garça and Meruri, close to Barra do Garças, 500 km from Cuiabá, and to the village of Tadarimana, close to Rondonópolis.

When diving In village life with her daughters, the teacher acquired a different perspective on motherhood and child care among native peoples.

The server, who passed the competition in 1990, observed how indigenous mothers dealt with their children, from resolving conflicts to breastfeeding. The daughters became “one more” in the village.

When she was with Laura, then three years old, for the first time in a village, Sylvia took gifts to distribute, but her daughter felt isolated. She bought plastic toys for the girl to entertain herself, and she shared them with the tribe.

“From then on, she was no longer alone. She played with everyone. There is no social life without exchange. This was a wonderful learning experience.”

Sylvia also traveled to Ethiopia three times with her daughters for research at USP. In the meantime, she did postdoctoral studies in England and Scotland. She also visited the Musée du Quai Branly, in Paris, and the University of Oxford.

While researching Pakistani feminists in Manchester, Sylvia was invited to the wedding of the daughter of one of them. She took her three inseparable traveling companions, a Hi8 camera and made a film there called “A Wedding in Pakistan”, about the extensive rituals of the ceremony in that country.

The professor mentions another film she produced with university colleagues in 2014, “Fabrik Funk”, a mix of documentary and fiction about funk in Cidade Tiradentes, east of São Paulo.

Sylvia founded Lisa (Image and Sound in Anthropology Laboratory) in 1991, a visual research center linked to FFLCH, at USP.

Lisa has a public collection on indigenous peoples available to teachers, students, researchers, indigenous people and other interested parties. There are 1,954 films, 24,500 images and 700 hours of sound recordings, in addition to books, theses and catalogues.

“These are images recorded 30, 40, 50 years ago. Now, the indigenous people themselves make their recordings. But, decades ago, it was anthropologists who played this role. The access of these communities to their own representations is a form of empowerment and cultural preservation .”

To achieve so many goals, Sylvia states that she carried out all the research she wanted in her 50-year career, in addition to USP, with the “crucial” financial support from Fapesp (Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo). “I established a pioneering, expensive laboratory that became a center of excellence in Brazil.”

She also gets excited when talking about an exhibition and film she is producing about the story of three 93-year-old foreign anthropologists who she describes as “wonderful women.”

About to retire next August, when she turns 75, the anthropologist warns that the university staff needs more teachers. Currently, USP has 2,010 active female professors and 3,304 male professors.

The employee says she intends to continue passing on her anthropological knowledge to the next generations as a volunteer teacher.