Transformação na grande propriedade rural e do sistema de moradia no Sertão Paraibano: entre velhas estruturas de dominação e novos contornos de resistência.

Abstract

This thesis analyzes the socio-productive transformations and labor relations linked to the housing system of the large rural property, in the interior of Paraíba, during the period of the cotton-livestock binomial and after its bankruptcy, with the breakdown of the partnership regime. Focused on two very unique study cases in their composition, which contemplate different conditions of subordination and reproduction of a social group, in the face of old and new structures of domination and realignment of the housing system, we sought to understand which itineraries were chosen and destination different actors involved, as well as updating their representations as categories or groups in rural areas. For this, the procedures for interpreting classical studies and local historiography on occupation, regional economics and oligarchic policies were well combined with research, especially through the use of life history and participant observation, in which the narrator's freedom is respected in that relates to your will on the chain and conciliation of the moments of your past and present. As a result, it was possible to conceive a pure type of category, or social group existing in the heyday of the “white gold”, which was called resident-meeiro, whose identity and sociability is linked to a specific type of moral economy, distinct from the residents “Subjects”, traditional of the cane fields. This untying of tutored rural workers, who were in opposing contexts: resident of the sugar zone x resident of cotton, is necessary for promoting the specificity of each social group and the force fields of which they were part. It is considered that the main purpose of this study was to reveal the existence of this specific social group, today resignified and resistant to the processes of exploitation-domination still present in the large rural property, which in turn, sought its productive restructuring after the collapse of the economy cotton in the interior of Paraíba. In such an updated situation, we still consider the place of the housing system in the maintenance of the large rural property, as a condition of sustenance both in its reproduction, and in advances in new productive arrangements, designed around modern discourses on sustainability and innovation, but surrounded of shadows from tradition.