(Re) Significados do rural : estudo da memória dos agricultores sobre o processo de modernização da agricultura na comunidade rural de Linha Acre, Cândido Godói-RS.

Abstract

The agricultural modernization process accounts for profound changes within small rural communities. Such changes whose meanings are perceived in the manifestations of memory present in everyday life of the players involved, can be seen in the economic, social, and spatial sphere. Therefore, it needs to be established how agricultural workers who have experienced and are experiencing the process of agricultural modernization, are shaping their collective memory in spaces of experiences, traditions, and customs, and (re)signify the experienced dynamics, transforming communities. From this standpoint, the general goal of this research was to analyze the meanings of said changes on the basis of the perception of players involved in this process by means of their daily experiences and in the shaping of both individual and collective memory that reveals itself under different forms in the present. In order to address the research problem and meet the goal proposed, the specific goals were divided as follows: a) analyze the experiences of agricultural workers with relation to the process of agricultural modernization, that is, what life in the community looked like before the 1960s; b) understand how said agricultural workers perceive changes that the community has lived through since the modernization of agriculture and how this interferes with the perceived image of the community; c) understand how the collective memory building process arises in the community; and d) analyze the dynamics of the collective memory potentiation as a strategy for building new ruralities. The main theoretical contribution to this kind of investigation is found in authors who are committed to understanding the memory which, for the purposes of this research, is understood through its ability to bring the past to the present in a constant memory reshaping process, which gives it its dynamic nature. Memory due to its ability to form a link between the past and the present is a tool to unveil the identities of players and, as a result, memory and identity are important allies in giving new meanings to the territory to which said players belong. The method used was life history with a qualitative approach to ethnographic research. The rural community of Linha Acre was chosen as an empirical cutoff since this author is familiar with said place and due to its characteristics. The memory revivified by such different manifestations as food, culture, traditions, objects, and other mnemonic registers analyzed over these two years of interaction with the community allowed us to uncover such identity traits related to the ethnical components of these subjects as “traces” of campesinities still present in the daily life of these families and community, even though they have new meanings, as important elements to be considered in processes aimed at rural development.