Of whom observes whom in Brazil when “I am one of your natives”: researching researchers in a situation of minimal alterity upwards

Abstract

Since the 1990s, increasingly, ethnographic curiosity and attention fall on the public that roams the academic corridors. Joining this effort, for four years I maintained contact with 33 experts who, moving between the fields of science and political action, participate in the controversial discussion about protected natural areas and populations affected by their creation. By converting this debate into a bond that brings me closer to my interlocutors, demarcating it as a subject for stories to be told, I reflect on the conditions of production of ethnographic work when in a situation of minimal alterity.