Mestres, territórios e identidades pesqueiras em João Pessoa: etnografia dos sistemas culturais da pesca artesanal nos bairros da Penha e Jacarapé.

Abstract

The present thesis, “Masters, territories and fishing identities in João Pessoa: an ethnography of small scale fishery cultural systems in the neighborhoods of Penha and Jacarapé", analyzes the forms of fishing culture social reproduction present in the lives of artisanal fishermen living in the neighborhoods of Penha and Jacarapé, located in the city of João Pessoa, Paraíba, Brazil. The general objective of the study was to understand, on the basis of sociological and anthropological parameters, the social reproduction of these fishermen communities in the contemporary context. The specific objectives, which were proposed as a means to find the answer to our central question, were to understand: a) how the populations studied organize their collective and specific ways of working, b) how they organize the continental and maritime spaces in order to conduct their everyday life practices by constructing and creating the so-called fishing territories, and c) how fishermen and fisherwomen construct and reconstruct their fishing cultural identities in the different political arenas of modernity. In order to achieve our research goals, we conducted a set of multi-sited ethnographies in the two chosen fising communities and in other political arenas with wich the fishermen carry a dialogue. That is to say, we conducted ethnographic research not only in the fishing communities, but also in other neighborhoods, thus integrating in our research other social actors and other political instances that directly interfere with the social life of the groups studied. In order to fulfill all the proposed objectives we adopted an anthropological methodology in which the ethnographies assumed a leading role in the development of the study as a whole. Our theoretical support was based on reflections and approaches coming from the work of anthropologists, which offered valuable support for our discussions concerning the concepts of cultural identity, territory and traditional culture (Tradition) of the fishing masters. We resorted, furthermore, to the notion of network, which was useful not only to organize the presentation of results in the end of the study, but also to organize the design and conduction of our field research.