O algodão e a “Estrutura de prestígio” dos moradores: crítica à história econômica do Semiárido

Abstract

The study on the “moradores” (farm dwellers) allowed us to combine interest in the cotton theme with the representations of the peasants around this commercial tillage. From this exercise arises the elaboration of a critical review of the economic history of cotton in the semi-arid. For in comparing the subjectivities of peasants with the objective truths that are produced in the domains of history and economy, we discover three major gaps in the economic history of cotton. The first gap is in the invisibility of the “moradores”: their description is only about their poverty, dependence and submission. The second gap is due to the relations of domination that have structured the cotton economy: they avoid bringing to the debate the importance of the economy of symbolic goods in maintaining enduring relationships of dependence. And the third rests in the influence of cotton in the civilizing process of the region. We thus rescued the “moradores”, their worldview, the economy of symbolic goods and the influence of the cultivation of cotton in the self-control of the peasants, problematizing them. As a result of indolent reason, economic historians failed to capture, as we do with our criticism, such elements and the symbolic capital of the “moradores”. We identify this symbolic capital, which we translate as "prestige structure," in the “moradores” memories of "cotton times". The "prestige structure" is, therefore, conditioned by the cotton economy, being the cultivation of this product, in the form of partnership relations, a positive determinant of “moradores” status. We then seek to understand this structure of the “moradores” feelings, through their testimonies and the criticism of the economic history of the semi-arid. The "prestige" of the “moradores”, or the honorable representation of their condition, reveals much about the interruption of the cotton culture: it questions, therefore, the thesis that the “bicudo” was the responsible for the decay of cotton in the semiarid. In this way, we pursue the tension between those who cultivated cotton and those who wrote about cotton, guided by the nuances, the transition periods of socioeconomic history of the transition periods of socioeconomic history of the semi-arid and complexity of the relationships that constitute this social formation.