The red leaves of the mangrove: An ethnography on the dead, death and tide in Matarandiba (BA)

Author(s)

Renata Freitas Machado

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2019-04-26

Examining board members

Silvana de Souza Nascimento; Ana Claudia Duarte Rocha Marques; Danilo Paiva Ramos; Carlos Emanuel Manzolillo Sautchuk; Anna Catarina Morawska Vianna

• Advisor: John Cowart Dawsey

Abstract

This thesis is the result of an ethnography about the marisqueiras (women who collect shellfish) and fishermen in the village of Matarandiba, Ilha de Itaparica, Bahia. The study deals with the relationships established with death, the dead and the tide. I begin with the death of a marisqueiras lady from the community. I walk through the cemetery and the narratives woven in this space. Then I arrive at the tide and describe the fishing activities. The relationships in this crossing are permeated by kinship and by the division of labor based on gender. We arrive at the crater (a geological accident that occurred on the island of Matarandiba) that frightens the living and threatens the memory of the dead. Accompanying the movement of marisqueiras between the tide and the house led me to consider the tide as a central place for people\'s lives in the village: a place of socialization, of memory and for raising and nourishing their children. Thus, I explore the local conception of the tide as a space-time that allows understanding - through the techniques and performances of fishermen and shellfishes - the essential relations of the community with the tide, kinship and death.With death and the dead as the subject of research, it was inevitable that the dimensions of life would manifest themselves through the productive activities of the village (fishing and shellfishing), the sewing of kinship relations, gender and power relations. This study starts from the methodological approach of performance anthropology in dialogue with the notion of technique as an analytical category. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 14/05565-9 - Aruê, Boi Estrela and São Gonçalo: an ethnography of social networks on performance
• Grantee: Renata Freitas Machado
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate