A simbologia da comida entre mulheres ciganas : saberes, rituais e memórias.

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the memories, meanings, knowledge, and food rituals among Romani (Cigana) women, employing an approach grounded in the principles of popular education and popular culture. The main objective was to understand the processes of knowledge sharing within the food practices of these women, as well as to map these food practices and comprehend their rituals and cultural meanings. The theoretical framework encompasses the fields of popular education, popular knowledge and culture, memory, and food studies, supported by authors such as Freire, Brandão, and Poulain. The research adopted a qualitative and descriptive approach, employing narrative writing procedures. The production of texts was conducted at the Onildes de Fátima da Rocha Municipal School in Caldas Novas, GO, with Romani women from the Youth and Adult Education (EJA) program. The narratives were recorded in individual notebooks, and the pedagogical activities were based on generative themes involving memories and experiences related to food. The data analysis, developed from Discursive Textual Analysis (ATD), followed the stages of unitarization, categorization, and the production of metatexts. Unitarization involved fragmenting the texts into units of meaning, while categorization grouped similar units. In the final stage, metatexts were produced to articulate the collected data with the theoretical framework, providing a deeper understanding of the phenomenon. The results reveal that the sharing of food knowledge manifests as an informal, intergenerational, and embodied pedagogical process, centered in the kitchen as a space for the transmission of technical, practical, affective, and ritualistic knowledge. This sharing ensures not only food security and the reproduction of the social order but also acts as a powerful mechanism for the preservation of collective memory and cultural resistance, affirming Romani identity and female protagonism in the maintenance of their traditions.