Family and frontier in colonial Brazil : Santana de Parnaíba, 1580-1822
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Family and frontier in colonial Brazil : Santana de Parnaíba, 1580-1822
University of California Press, 1992
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Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Colonial families in the Brazilian town of Santana de Parnaiba lived on the fringe of settlement in a vast and perilous continent. In her revealing community history, the author tells how these settlers pursued family strategies that adapted European custom to the American environment. Turning to recorded events such as marriages, baptisms and especially inheritances, she discovers that as the newcomers transformed the wilderness into a settled agricultural community, they laid the foundation for a class society of planters, peasants and slaves. With a description of family life at all three levels of society, the author shows how the families most successful in exploiting and controlling the resources of the wilderness gained wealth, power and social dominance. The author challenges accepted views by contending that not only external economic forces but also colonial family strategies paved the way for an inegalitarian society in Brazil. Her portrayal of frontier survival and coping, together with the heedless exploitation of wilderness resources, brings a historical perspective to the consideration of Brazil's last frontier, the Amazon.
Table of Contents
- Part 1 The culture of conflict: field reality and theory
- the anthropology and the politics of genocide
- domination, acting and fantasy. Part 2 Resisting "ethnicity": the Israeli state and Bedouin identity
- hyenas on the border. Part 3 Ideas on Philippine violence: assertions, negation and narrations
- time and irony in Manila
- squatter movements. Part 4 When the people were strong and United: stories of the past and the transformation of politics in a Mexican community. Part 5 The politics of painting: political murals in Northern Ireland. Part 6 A grammar of terror: psycho-cultural responses to state terrorism in dirty war and post-dirty war Argentina. Part 7 The backyard front. Part 8 Conflict and violence.
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