An ethnography of Agostinho Neto land in Sao Tome and Principe

• Grant number: 23/05301-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: September 01, 2023
• End date: February 28, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Rural Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Nashieli Cecilia Rangel Loera
• Grantee: Lauro José de Assunção Rosa Cardoso
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research has as its ethnographic locus the lives of residents and the relationships that make up the Agostinho Neto land. It is important to emphasize that the word or category roça in São Tomé and Príncipe (STP) assumes a connotation similar to that of a large estate, a mill, a farm or a plantation economy, which in the case of the roça Agostinho Neto was, historically, marked by cocoa production as a monoculture. Another term in STP, which also refers to the roça, is that of former agricultural enterprise, related to the fact that Agostinho Neto operated as a company belonging to a private company or Portuguese institution during a historical period known as the second colonization, under a regime of employment contracts for servants from countries such as Cape Verde, Angola and Mozambique. It is also important to understand historical processes such as the nationalization of the swiddens (1975) and the agrarian reform (1991), which took place under the mediation of the São Tomé state and in relation to the constitution of the swiddens in the archipelago. In analytical terms, the objective is to understand, currently, the social and material transformations that occur in the Agostinho Neto farm, with anthropology, history and archeology as areas in dialogue. (AU)