Inventando tradições, construindo identidades: etnografando o bloco da saudade.

Abstract

Modernity comes about with new designs on how to perceive and produce identifications, both regarding its institutionalizing and representative ways of producing social balance. In Brasil, the Carnaval party comprises a symbolic language producer of meanings, which translates, to great extent, the national identity shaping values. Hybrid values, which are produced within the multiple representations of cultural identity interweaving social relations. Based on these assumptions, this paper examines the Bloco da Saudade (The Block of Reminiscence), established in 1991, in Campina Grande-PB, from the strategies and tactics used by the social actors of this Carnaval block to build the symbols representative of the local cultural tradition and, as an experience in the Construction of the carnival, sets new directions to the city spaces and practices of sociability produced for consumption in the block. It should be worthy of notice here that this dramatization staged by Bloco da Saudade, aiming to establish legitimacy to their practices, is framed as one possibility among the multiple forms of belonging, and construction of sociability spaces.