The past as resource: sociability, authority and memory in center west São Paulo

Abstract

In this article, I propose totreat the past as a symbolic resource, supporting me some ideas out lined by the Indian anthropologist Arjun Appadurai in his famous article The past as a scarce resource man, published in 1981. Put in these terms, I analyze the empirical case of the inhabitants of Borá, a small town located in the state of São Paulo. The goal is to understand how the older families build the discourse about the past and how they manage that way the collective memory of the population. Kinship and descent characterize some aspects of this relationship with the past. However, what legitimizes feel as authorized narrators of local history is the consensus formed around the representations of pioneering. In short, I try to go with the reader the paths of research, present thein formants who met in the course field work and demonstrate how sociability also configures through the past. The data presented are the result of ethnographic research conducted in the years 2011-2012 in Borá (more precisely, interspersed with visits weekly or monthly). In presenting the data, reporting, firs- person, relationships and situations experienced, trying to narrate through ethnographic description my insertion and Field experience. Also, it uses secondary sources that allowed content analysis and consulting the literature, especially in dialogue with the anthropological theory.