Entre contos e cantos : a construção da memória coletiva das práticas culturais em Regência Augusta

Abstract

Regência Augusta makes part of the city of Linhares. It is a small village sorrounded by the mouth of the river Rio Doce and the sea. Most of the community decends from the miscigenation of indians, black and white people, commonly named in the region as natives or caboclos. Such actors are intimately bound to two local cultural practices: fishing and Congo. This paper claims to study both practices in the village by analizing especially the construction of the collective memory through the dwellers’ memories. Due to the aspect of the research, it is necessary to use a qualitative approach by using the social center area of the village as a direct source of data. The field observation has enabled to get to know the daily life and the relations among the actors involved in the community as well as the oral articulations built from such gatherings. The steps elaborated for the research constist in: bibliographic selection; theme related oral history interviews with the actors involved in the cultural practices selected and daily action observations; and data analysis. The research is based on the theoretical framework of authors who discuss the concepts of history and memory with Halbwachs (2003) and Le Goff (2013). Since it relates to a traditional communty, cultural matters were inevitably approched, supported by reflexions brought by Burke (2008) and Canclini. In the data analysis, Geerts’ (1997) concepts of the interpretation of the cultures were considered. Concerning the storytellers/narrators of the history, the theories from Benjamin (1994) have based the debates. In the empyrical data collection, which involves the direct interview of the actors who participate in the community of Regência Augusta, whose memories were to be known, the theme related oral history method was used (MEIHY, 2015), obtaining an amount of 9 oral reports. Along the study three notes were expressive: the collective memory which is reassured in community solidarity, the fishing and Congo cultural practices and their relation with the river/sea and the popular knowledge transmission through telling and singing stories. The identifications brought in the narratives, of both Fisheries and the Congo, showed that the practices have a training and education in a dimension for practical life in the cultural and social aspects of the village.