Modos de participação nas culturas do escrito em uma comunidade rural no norte de Minas Gerais

Abstract

This thesis presents the results of research on the modes of participation in the cultures of writing in a group belonging to a rural community located in Porteirinha in the north of Minas Gerais. The group focused is to rezadeiras and benzedores, adults with brief experiences of schooling, established in the oral tradition in a region with low production and circulation of written material. This study is articulated to a wider on the different ways in which individuals, families and social groups traditionally associated with the oral world made in the XIX and XX centuries, their participation in the cultures of writing. Are analyzed ways to use written, their interrelations with orality and its implications on cultural practices and the social network, in the context of written diffusion in the second half of the twentieth century. In the methodology, the study worked with the change of scales of observation: in a first moment the research focused on the writing in the community and institutions as church and schools were identified as main spaces of circulation of written material and dissemination of reading and writing practices; then are analyzed the trajectories of five individuals in order to understand ways of entering on the world of writing and the uses to which these individuals came to do the writing. Are employed different approaches and sources: oral reports; cataloging and analysis of written material in the home of the individuals studied; statistical data on literacy rates and education in the region; laws on the process of formation and expansion of school network of the municipality in which the community under study is inserted. The analysis pointed out the Catholic Church as the main agency in the dissemination of written materials and practices of reading and writing, strongly influencing the development of skills in reading and writing of some of the subjects studied