When math worlds collide: Intention and invention in ethnomathematics

Ethnomathematics is a relatively new discipline that investigates mathematical knowledge in small-scale, indigenous cultures. This essay locates ethnomathematics as one of five distinct subfields within a general anthropology of mathematics and describes interactions between cultural and epistemological features that have created these divisions. It reviews the political and pedagogical issues in which ethnomathematics research and practice is immersed and examines the possibilities for both conflict and collaboration with the goals, theories, and methods of serial constructivism.