Exploring ethnomathematics activities to tobacco farmers’ community at Jember, East Java, Indonesia

Abstract

This research aims to explore and describe the ethnomathematics on activities of the tobacco farmers’ community at Jember. The discourse that explained ethnomathematics could be related to tobacco’s farmer activities at Jember East Java, Indonesia. Jember was one of the largest tobacco-producing districts in East Java, Indonesia. These plants were grown for generations by some residents at Jember, East Java, Indonesia. The tobacco farming heritages had caused this district is known as the city of tobacco so that the government of Jember made tobacco motifs as batik of Jember. Besides, the dance Jember named Lambaco also be created as an appreciation for the existence of tobacco. This research uses qualitative research, while the approach used is Ethnographic. The data collected by observation and interview involved several farmers. Based on result and discussion, we can conclude that on tobacco farmer community in Jember, there are many activities; giving a unit of land, seeding, transplanting and cultivating, harvesting, curing, and trading involved ethnomathematics activities such as: using of nonstandard units, arithmetic concept (computing, addition, multiplication, subtraction), geometrical concept, especially of rectangular shape, triangular shape, perpendicular line, 3-D shape, proportional and relational concept, statistics (estimating)