Cidade da Parahyba, cultura e cotidiano nas teias mercantis do império

Abstract

Linked to the Graduate Program in History of the Federal University of Paraíba (PPGH-UFPB), this work analyzes the daily business interactions experienced in the capital of Parahyba do Norte province, between 1850 and 1875. To understand the dynamics From the exchanges practiced there in the context of the imperial period, the implications of commercial activity on the occupation of urban space, the relations of sociability and the experiences of acquisition and consumption of goods and services then existing were explored. Through a reading of this object of study in its various modalities (such as public markets, free markets, taverns and warehouses, among others), through the incorporation of sources such as: official printed and handwritten documentation, in the form of reports the State Department of Finance Affairs and provincial presidents, censuses, collections of Empire laws, grade books; and some of the different newspapers that circulated in Parahyba City, among them: The Parahybano Governor, The Regeneration, The Order, The Publisher, and The Alarm Clock (produced during the 1840s to 1880s); in addition to bibliographic forms. Adopting the perspective built by Michel de Certeau (1995 and 2014) within cultural studies - elaborating a cultural history - that establishes an understanding of space as a product of constant interaction and interpretation, and changes in form and meaning resulting from the action of consumption. The city under uninterrupted human intervention is conceived here as a practiced place, being also a place of experience - in the form of tactics and strategy - and of memory (LE GOFF, 1990), as well as the place of establishing social networks (SIRINELLI, 1992 and SIMMEL, 1983) articulated between traders, producers and customers. As a result, the identification of relations of mutual influence, expressed in elements such as: the movements and organizational logic of the urban nucleus operating between hygienist demands still under development (SCHWARCZ, 1993) and local needs and customs that insisted on contradicting the norms imposed by the city. public Power; the relational webs experienced by people of diverse origins favoring political articulations and serving as a mechanism of social mobility; besides fragments of the daily practices and spaces of commerce in the city of Parahyba.