Do mato ao reinado: uma etnografia da interação humano-caprino no Cariri Paraibano

Abstract

The field of studies on human-animal relations in anthropology goes back to the canons of science. Anthropologists such as E.E.Evans-Pritchard, Claude Lèvi-Strauss and Mary Douglas bring in their reflections the animal figure in a perspective outside human life, contemplated as "others" in social relations. With the ontological turn, or animal turn, in the 1970s, a new perspective emerges for anthropology that proposes to break with the nature-culture dichotomy. Based on this premise, the present dissertation describes the interaction between humans and goats, demonstrating how both species contribute to social construction and to the dilution of a dualistic conception imposed by modernity. In this way, the work answers how an animal, which for many years was considered by the locals as a bush animal, is now honored and crowned in the King Goat Festival, the biggest national festival, created in Cariri in the 90s. The research aims to investigate the insertion of the animal in the Paraiban context, to describe the coronation of the goat, to investigate the personification of the non-human animal, to understand the non-human animal as a being that has casual agency, and to go through the crossings for data collection in the field. For the realization of the dissertation, the ethnographic method was employed, with its various techniques, participant observation, open interviews, photographic records and record data in the field diary, in the period from January to March 2021, in the municipality of Cabaceira, in the State of Paraíba. Therefore, I elaborate, according to local perception, how the non-human animal, becomes a central social agent, contributing to the social, cultural, and administrative dynamics of the municipality.