Poder local em Tocantins: domínio e legitimidade em Arraias
AUTOR(ES)
Magda Suely Pereira Costa
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO
2008
RESUMO
This thesis examines the local power in Arraias, a municipality in the Brazilian state of Tocantins, with the objective of identifying its social and political dynamics. In it, I argue that the municipality, even as it undergoes secular changes, it evidences analogous forms what Max Weber describes as the traditional and the rational-legal dominations - are legitimized through the instrumentation of various social orders, namely: the religious, the patriarchal, the reciprocal, the politico-partisan and the gubernatorial. The database consists of historical, ethnographic and statistical information and of fieldwork which covers not only the municipal seat of Arraias, Tocantins, but also the district of Canabrava and the town of Mimoso. By analyzing this data, I conclude that power is exercised in Arraias by local farmers, usually politicians and members of traditional lineages who use the different social orders to legitimize their domination of the local society. I also emphasize how, despite this political continuity, Arraias today displays a paradoxical and transitional cultural dynamic where the same society which lives with traditionalist culture seeks to adapt itself to the normalization imposed by the modern rational and legal field. The result, I argue, is a reflexive movement marked by a growing consciousness of the individual and collective responsibility to promote independence, freedom and democracy. To understand these relationships of domination, I resort to Max Webers theories of domination and power. To evidence and describe the instrumentation of sacred space, the various material and symbolic exchanges used to legitimize both elections and different types of Executive, Legislative and Judicial action, I resort to concepts related to the gift, patriarchy, rustic Roman Catholicism and electoral and governance systems. I conclude examining the festivities especially religious and official festivities in which different exchanges lead to a sacredization of the political along with a simultaneous desecration of religious. In this regard, I argue, politicians and clergy, farmers and their lineages, all use modernized means of negotiation and reciprocity to perpetuate their traditional exercise of power over the society of Arraias. However, changes have been established and strengthened itself in recent decades, including the performance of more vigorous legislative and judicial spheres, the constant use of constitutional rules in favor of citizenship and the greatest civil society awareness.
ASSUNTO(S)
dominação domination legitimidade e mudanças sociologia legitimacy and changes power poder
