Turismo, trabalho e uso de recursos naturais no litoral paraense: a construção da noção de mudança na localidade costeira de Marudá, Amazônia Atlântica

Abstract

Based on the specific case of coastal fishing communities in the state of Pará, the thesis proposes to highlight potential epistemological limitations of interdisciplinary research, particularly those fields related to the categories of society and nature, such as Ethnobotany and Ethnopharmacology, which have become important instances of reflection on processes of social change. The research centers on the re-articulations of social relations in the spheres of daily life, work and natural resources usage in the locality of Marudá (Marapanim-PA, Atlantic Amazon), and tries to understand how the notions of change and continuity have been circumstantially employed to qualify social life and society and nature relations in the place over time. It focuses on the theme of tourism, in particular, and intends to recognize the specificities of the visiting practices performed in Marudá and their influence on the organization of economic life, the structuration of daily life and the traditional knowledge regimes of its permanent population. In order to achieve these objectives, the research inventories data from scientific literature related to marine animal extractivism and popular phytotherapy practices carried out in the place, and allies its analysis to the production of data in field work, through participant observation and semi-structured interviews. By revealing the double engagement patterns of marudaenses to alternate working universes, the thesis demonstrates that although tourism has absorbed workforce of the local people and occupied them in its specific functions, it did not promote the fragmentation of their lifestyles and their economic life organization, as predicted by part of the previous literature. It finally concludes that the persistent split between interdisciplinary fields and disciplinary fields of research – particularly the social sciences –, in spite of the legitimate need to preserve particular approaches to different objects of study, has favored the reproduction of avoidable mistakes, constituting the root of deterministic and fatalistic interpretations of social change in regions of notable socio-biodiversity, such as the Amazon or, specifically, its Atlantic portion.