Revista IDEAS (Dec 2009)
“A gente é que nem os boi, roda, roda e não sai do lugar”: estrutura e história no meio rural brasileiro
Abstract
The theme of this article talks about important Knowledge such as structure, history and event. And words like conflicts, family and cinema are some of the key words of this search. Particularly, this article analyzed the family fights on the north east of Brazil, using as source the movie “Abril despedaçado” (Walter Salles 2001). An extension bibliography revision was made about how the theme has been treated by Brazilian anthropology and sociology, and then the theory of the American anthropologist Marshall Sallins (1994) was used in the analysis of the film, trying to clear up the concepts of structure and history to the north east society. According to Sallins the two terms (history and structure) can not be used as opposite, his theory talks about creative actions of historical individual. On the movie the reproduction of determined event causes changes on his interpretations that represent changes on the categories of thought of individuals, occurring new opportunities of social orientation and release than of the weight of tradition. The author uses the term “structural change” because according to him, the alteration of meaning changes the position between cultural categories causing “systemic change”.