The prestige structure of the residents in the reconstruction of the "time of cotton"

Abstract

After conducting ethnographic research on farms in the semi-arid region of Ceará, we identified common symbolic forms of thinking among the peasants who resided there that comprise what we define as a prestige structure, namely the reconstruction of the social memory of these peasants about their experiences of partnership in the cotton economy. Within their symbolic system they construct a structure of emotions based on the social conditions derived from contemporary rural experience, most notably the “prestige” they had during what they call the cotton era. In this way, we emphasize the role of the economy of symbolic goods in maintaining lasting relationships of dependence, rather than poverty, dependence and submission (which has been frequent among historians of economics). Through interviews and informal conversations as part of participant observation of contemporary rural work, we were able to capture the residents' social memory of the cotton era and the partnership relationships which produce honorable images of their condition in their memories, along with a complex worldview in which they combine the achievements of the present with characteristic elements of traditional domination. This ethnographic research, along with theoretical contributions from the sociology of Bourdieu and the economic history of the semiarid region, permits a discussion of the prestige structure found among the residents (more precisely, how it was shaped, and its contradictions and disintegration) by examining the complex relationships that constitute this social formation.