Struggle, aid and sacrifice in animal breeding by the ‘people’ of góis-ce

Abstract

This article has as main themes the ‘sacrifice’ and ‘peleja (struggle)’ in raising relations constituted by small landowners and their livestock in a rural community called Góis, located in Northeast Brazil. The article aims to submerge the reader in the house environment, where the activities related to the caring for animals flourishes by the legs and hands of grandmothers and mothers. These are women that assume the authority over the raising knowledge and properly practices on the ‘peleja’ with kin and animals. Together with the ‘povo’, or the community of persons who lives and transits between the house of Góis landowners, mothers and grandmothers struggles with children, grandchildren and livestock in order to make their live flourish. As I show in the article, web of aids are essentials to the struggle with kin and animals. Aids are given and received where kin have houses and chickens have coops. These aids are often remembered in ‘histories’ and accompanied with ‘sacrifices’ implicated in rearing relations with pigs, goats and chickens called ‘trabalhosos’ (laborious) by their breeders.

Keywords

• sacrifício
• tempo
• relações de criação
• povo
• animais de criação