Ecology, Memory, and Sociality in the Semi-Arid Region of Northeast Brazil

• Grant number: 25/07084-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor
• Start date: November 15, 2025
• End date: November 14, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Theory of Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Ana Claudia Duarte Rocha Marques
• Grantee: Renan Martins Pereira
• Supervisor: Casey Ray High
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Edinburgh, Scotland
• Associated to the scholarship: 23/09667-0 - Ecology and memory, BP.PD

Abstract

Based on ethnographic material collected in the semi-arid region of Northeast Brazil, this project aims to analyze how social memory becomes a practice of creation, revitalization, and preservation of the Caatinga biome. In the face of soil erosion, chronic droughts, and increasing desertification in many areas of the region, I seek to examine how the memories of the human inhabitants of the Caatinga act inventively in response to the global ecological crisis. The ancestral craft of the cowboy and goat herder, along with traditional knowledge about vegetation and animals, constitute the primary objects of analysis and observation in this proposal. The goal is to understand collective memory and the relationships of sertanejos with the environment not only through the lens of social representation. From an ecological perspective, my hypothesis is that social memory transforms the Caatinga into a biome conducive to world-making. Historically marginalized by Anthropology and still underexplored within the discipline, the relationships of sertanejos with the Caatinga allow for a theoretical and methodological reassessment of conceptual affinities between ecology, memory, and sociality across different subfields, such as rural anthropology, the anthropology of memory, and contemporary environmental anthropology. (AU)