New Challenges for Anthropological Instrumental in Identification of

Abstract

Positive changes in the Brazilian indigenist scene, since the end of the 1980’s, resulted in the increase of communities’ national movements, which took the Brazilian anthropological community by surprise, that immediately applied theoretical criteria proposed by the anthropologist Fredrick Barth, about the establishment of the ethnic borders of emerging groups. This paper is an alert for the danger of extremist interpretations and exclusivists uses of the Barthian theory, as the unique identity criteria. Taking as base the resulting experiences of the application of this theory in the case cocama in Alto Solimões area, this essay intends to reveal the fragility of this anthropological instrumental and the need of theoretical and practical elements for an equilibrated and impartial cases analysis of the emerging indigenous groups.