Infância, políticas e mudanças geracionais: um estudo socioantropológico na zona rural de Orobó.

Abstract

This thesis aims to understand the processes of social change in the childhood experience of rural children. The locus of the research is the rural area of Orobó, a small municipality located in the Northern Agreste of Pernambuco. Supported by the theoretical framework of Social Sciences, I conducted a qualitative research. For the data collection, it was pertinent to combine the ethnographic experience, the participant observation, the in-depth interview, the analysis of the life trajectory of the children's parents, as well as the study of text and drawing records made on paper by the children. In the process of collecting empirical data, the aspect of social life that stood out the most was the rural work. I noticed that the childhood of the parents and grandparents of the current generation of children was marked by work, by performing physical activities aimed at family subsistence. To a certain extent, I could see in the research that the work was revealed as the social marker that differentiates childhood experiences between past generations and the current generation. At the present, children's involvement in the work is reduced when compared to what their parents and grandparents did in childhood. This fact seems to be part of a process of generational change. I observed during the research that this change occurred by the crossing of some factors. There was a change in the place of socialization of rural children. In the past, socialization took place in the fields, in the flour house, ― on top of the gamela‖. In the last decade, the school has become the privileged place for children to meet with themselves. In recent decades, several public policies have been implemented, which have enabled structural changes in the construction of houses and schools, in the implementation of school transport, in the construction of cisterns and of skeptical pits, in the building of health centers with regular operation and many other local improvements that significantly affect the childhood experiences in the countryside. The Bolsa Família Program was the one among the public politics implemented in the region that gained the most notoriety in this study. Several data indicate that this Program is the one that has the most impact on the use of children's time and on the relationship that they establish with the work and with their families. At the end of the research I find that in the last decade there have been significant changes in childhood experiences. However, it can be seen that the eradication of child labor in rural areas remains a challenge for the State.