Ebb tide and flood tide: cultural senses and feelings in Matarandiba
Matarandiba. Community practices. Identity. Development. Cultural diversity.
The present work aims to analyze the community-based cultural practices and manifestations organized by the traditional community of shellfish gatherers and fishermen in Matarandiba, Bahia, located on the coast of Itaparica Island. Through the analysis 12 cultural practices and expressions, we sought to understand how the community uses these practices to collectively reaffirm and empower itself, building solutions for realities that threaten its existence. In this sense, the cultural conceptions and actions of the community are taken as symbolic devices that reveal cultural routines and the impacts experienced from collective action. The perception of the facts was being built with methodological support from ethnography which enabled a greater connection with residents, extending the period of coexistence and sharing an experience lived over eight discontinuous months. This experience, confronted by a theoretical framework, contributed to the interpretation of this daily life recorded in the field notebook, generated from participant observation. The organization of the festive calendar, incorporated into the practices, highlighted the way in which the community is structured and its added development process, the economic and solidary conduct developed in the territory. Connecting lived knowledge and practices, we contact the metamorphosis experienced by its residents from what has been built, produced and reframed, going beyond the look projected on material inequalities, to settle in a place of power and transformation, acting in the resolution local difficulties.