Culture and identity in the South of Brazil
According to DAMATTA (1981) culture can be considered in two aspects, which modify its concept, its use in common sense, and its use in the anthropological sense, in which it ceases to be a simple word and becomes an intellectual category, which helps us to see the world.
The issue of identity is being discussed extensively in social theory. In essence, the argument goes like this: the old identities, which for so long stabilized the social world, are in decline, giving rise to new identities and fragmenting the modern individual, who was seen as a unified subject. The so-called “identity crisis” associated with the globalization process, is seen as part of a broader process of change that is displacing the central structures and processes of modern society and undermining the frames of reference it gave to individuals a stable anchorage in the social world (HALL, 2006).
Cultural identity is built within processes that mark boundaries, or rather, zones of contact between groups that distinguish them due to differences in their practices, habits and customs, related to the trajectories and life histories of their agents. Changes in the contemporary world can lead to changes in lifestyles and consequent changes in customs. Efforts to maintain speech, music, dance, martial arts, and cooking are ways of trying to preserve cultural identity in the contemporary context of a world that has become transnational. Rural men and women and the complex rural-urban organizations provide a rich framework for anthropological study. Thus, the objective of the project is to document through images and interviews the richness and identity and cultural complexities of the Santa Catarina plateau, highlighting the identity practices, as well as their agents.
