Herdeiros: o papel da família na educação das futuras gerações nos termos de Sabará e de Ouro Preto (1721 1780)

Abstract

The objective of this work is to analyze of the educational practices of families from Sabará and Ouro Preto between 1721 and 1780. For this, we opted for a research in bibliography and wills registered in these villages throughout the eighteenth century. In this work, we first seek to present the main sources with which we worked, the wills, and the meanings they assume in that period. At this point it is important information that was analyzed through the establishment of a sample of the almost 3000 wills available for the period studied. The first chapter presents the cultural and social profile of historical subjects and their families. The analysis is always made from the theoretical debate in which the work is inserted and, consequently, it is understood the meanings that the family assumes for the historical agents and how the relations in the family were established in the eighteenth century of Minas Gerais. In the second chapter, from a debate with the bibliography and with what can be found in the sources researched here, we try to deal with the meanings that education assumes in the Luso-Brazilian XVIII century. In the third chapter, are analyzed some case that emerge from the documentary mass. In general, from the essays on the educational strategies undertaken by these families, the family's role in the educational trajectory of the future generations is sought to understand the families' educational strategies in relation to their descendants. The focus in this chapter is to apply the theoretical-methodological framework coined by Pierre Bourdieu in another historical context. Of course this is not possible without establishing a critical dialogue with the French sociologist. Finally, in the fourth chapter, the nucleus of the thesis is presented and for this it is sought to understand how this family deals with the education, in the broadest sense of the term, that it intended to bequeath to its heir. From a nominative cross between wills and post-mortem inventories, it is possible to see what strategies have allowed families to educate their heirs. In this case, a trajectory study with a strong qualitative and microanalytical approach presents all its potential in the understanding of documentation. The research in History of Education for Portuguese America is very rarefied, and, therefore, it is urgent work to understand the role of the family of the eighteenth century in the transmission of education as an inheritance. At the conclusion of this work, it was sought to emphasize the limitation that historiography revisions present to the families that actually exist, the relationships woven, the forged feelings and the complexity that emerge from the sources. In addition, at that time and region, there was a strong mix of cultural and social traditions. Educational longevity may be related to the cultural capital shared by these families, although there seems to always be a differentiation between the children (income / profession) and daughters (especially marriage or religious status). Another conclusion that is placed in this framework of reproduction is the sense that it reaches in a society marked by the great presence of immigrants and deep miscegenation. It is argued here, as Bourdieu pointed out to France in the second half of the twentieth century, that here a esterese process is at play, that is, the continuation of the action of habitus even when the social and cultural conditions that made it appear have disappeared. Finally, it is necessary to point out some shortcomings of this work, in this sense still some questions remain. Did all social groups behave in a similar way? Did slaves or poor people behave in the same way? In what sources can these social groups be found? Would there be cuts of another kind, such as gender, ethnic racial and even religious? In this case a quantitative approach would be quite interesting? Did all individuals behave in the same social group in the same way in relation to education or did they have professional or educational courts?