Back and forth of the silk: Regional production and reproduction of memories and identities

Seropédica is seen as a “region of border” between urban and agricultural universes. One of Rio de Janeiro state’s cities it had in its cultural past, in the middle of the 19^th century, the presence of a farm that created the silk animal, produced and exported the silk fabric. The city counts with a political project of identity construction for the region on the part of the public agencies. The actions on the part of this agencies point to a processes whose horizons are the rescue of a lost memory, from new references, as a base for the construction of a municipal identity. Some characteristics of the city that remind of the “wastelands” have been stimulated like dancing groups, music balls, the local carnival but also the carnival that connects the city to the big metropolis. The interest in developing tourism in the region uses the advantage of the silk culture of the past to stimulate the blackberries and it’s tea leaf as a distinctive reference to a glorious past identity. The identities are symbolic constructions through which the individuals and groups perceive their ethnic and/or regional belonging. These constructions are, in great measure, consequences of social identities consisting “from idea of belonging to collectives culturally defined and, eventually, related to specific territories” (Seyferth, 1995:57) that, in turn, result in multiple axles of social classification of ethnic and regional nature coexisting in `modern societies. These classificatory axles have influence in the objective reality of the people defining their behaviors, rights and duties conditioned by the social status that they occupy in this society. We intend to investigate how those identities forged for Seropédica are appropriated by the people who live and work in the city with regards to defending common economic and/or political interests.