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This paper reconstructs some findings of the project "Common arithmetic knowledge and productive and social practices"; the questions which direct it are: What sort of number and calculus problems its productive and social insertion poses to these organizations? IA/hat are the social worries that support the strategies in the solving of arithmetic problems? The empirical referent is constructed through the perspective of two women who lead two productive organizations (in Mexico and Argentina) of self-management linked to craft production. Some analytical advances referred to Mexico (Purepecha indigenous community) are reported. In particular, the uses of numeracy and their links to the community social criteria of extra mathematical order that underlie and cross different situations which are framed not in an individual action, but in a collective one. These criteria rule two kinds of relations: the inner ones and the outer ones, crossed by the concerns around power (the nice power) and the defence (to face the outside) of the organization. The reconstructing of these senses implies a positioning that redefines the polarity literacy! illiteracy, by asking how one can learn to read or write numbers under such circumstances, when the knowledge of the number writings is limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]