Ethnomathematics is a young interdisciplinary field that brings together perspectives from several disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, including anthropology, the philosophy and history of mathematics, education, and mathematics education. One of its aims is to develop tools and methods for identifying and analyzing mathematical practices used in different societies—particularly those described as having an oral tradition—even though the people who engage in these practices do not themselves perceive them as mathematical.
Foundational research -----------------------
The texts regarded as foundational to ethnomathematics were published in the 1970s and 1980s. The first was Claudia Zaslavsky's (1917–2006) book Africa Counts: Number and Pattern in African Cultures (Prindle, Weber and Schmidt), published in 1973. A mathematics teacher in New York, Zaslavsky was eager to offer her predominantly African American students an education based partly on African materials. In this study of societies in sub-Saharan Africa, she analyzes various everyday practices she observed during visits to Kenya and Nigeria as expressions of mathematical rationality: practices involving number names, the organization of time, architecture, decorative patterns, and games. Although her analyses may seem somewhat lacking in depth today, Claudia Zaslavsky offered an innovative perspective—geared, in her words, toward "sociomathematics"—which she was able to promote for several years at Columbia University and which encouraged other researchers to pursue this avenue.
The term "ethnomathematics" was introduced in the 1980s through the respective research of mathematicians Marcia Ascher and Ubiratàn D'Ambrosio, each of whom proposed a definition.
Brazilian historian of mathematics Ubiratàn D'Ambrosio (1932–2021) wrote the first article whose title explicitly mentions the term. In this paper, published in 1985, he defines "ethnomathematics" as the mathematics practiced by different societies, or by any social group that can be identified by shared traditions and goals, whether rural or urban communities, groups of workers, professional classes, etc. The explicit aim of D'Ambrosio's ethnomathematics program is to study the mathematics practiced by all human groups, throughout history. In this sense, his ambitious research program amounts to a general anthropology of mathematical concepts and practices.