“Too much small talk in Corumbá”: gossip, politics and morality in a Pantanal city

Abstract

The city of Corumbá-MS, which has around 100,000 inhabitants. From the reading of Bailey (1971) we think the relations established between gossip and politics around personal reputations, and the belonging of people to one or more “moral communities” in the city, which we call the social circuits of gossip. Studying gossip can contribute ethnographically for researches on several elements of the social structure of the city: such as labor relations, on the way of doing business at the border, on local politics and the formation of social hierarchies, migrants flows, about the meanings of love relationships, gender relations, on the construction of social roles, status and social position of individuals in the “map” of the city.

Keywords

• Fofoca
• Política
• Moralidade