Participant Research in rural territories

female stories of struggle, farming and shellfish farming

Abstract

The studies and works of anthropologist Carlos Rodrigues Brandão were paradigmatic for the Popular Education field, as they provided the theoretical, epistemological and methodological bases for criticizing positivist science and valuing popular and traditional knowledge. Elaborating a culture conception as knowledge and meaning, Brandão recognizes human beings as essentially beings of learning, defending a critical, dialogical and counter-hegemonic popular education. Thus, in the light of Brandão’s (and the participant research) theory of education as culture, we will discuss female experiences of building cultures and popular knowledge, intertwined with the processes of resistance and permanence in the rural territories of peasant women and female shellfish gatherers, in the states of São Paulo and Piauí. We argue that persistence in struggle is intrinsically linked to the popular education experiences of women from the countryside and from the waters discussed in this article, since the struggle for permanence in the territories, based on the ecological management of nature and the knowledge valorization of traditional populations, translates into as individual, family and collective resistance within the social realities presented.