"No peito ou compressor": trabalho e mudança social entre pescadores de lagosta na costa da Paraíba

Abstract

This study aims to present an overview of lobster fishing in the state of Paraiba from the perspective of social changes within the last 30 years, in the fishing communities of Baía da Traição and Acaú, both of them respectively in the north and south coast of the state. Although we consider these two communities as similar because they have set in artisanal fisheries one of their main local characteristics, we can also say that the two have very particular characteristics, over which we have closely analyzed throughout this work that examines current aspects reproduced from (dis)continuities and social changes arising from the implementation of new technologies, market demands, representation and social division of labor in artisanal fisheries, and more specifically in the lobster fishing. In this regard, we use the oral history as a research method, for it enables new versions of the history as it gives voice to multiple and different narrators, providing, especially history to be a more democratic activity, in charge of the communities themselves. Underneath the notion of maritime socio-anthropology, or socio-anthropology of fishing, we have studied the variety and complexity of the technical, social and symbolic systems developed by the coastal populations in the process of marine appropriation spaces, from where they derive their subsistence and surplus market. We also present significant changes in the notions of risk and inheritance, amending and/or replacing the production system from the fishing technique, the economic relations dependent on the markets and symbolic issues in the division of labor in traditional fishing.