(FOLK)comunicação, cultura e identidade: práticas alimentares do consumo de tanajura enquanto dimensões comunicativas em Tianguá (CE)

Abstract

The thesis investigates how communicational practices based on cultural consumption help to strengthen culture and local identity, with an emphasis on the consumer habits of the inhabitants of the municipality of Tianguá (CE). Located in the Serra da Ibiapaba, the region stands out for its natural ingestion of the ant (tanajura) which reflects in the sociocultural dynamics proposed by residents and visitors of that community. The reports reveal that this eating habit arose with Indians - the first inhabitants of the region and has been perpetuated until today. The thesis is defended that, the communicative actions linked to the consumption of this delicacy, reveal cultural actions that translate ways, behaviors and customs of the region over the years and that these food customs can be understood as a culinary system that is part of a set which emphasizes social and symbolic relations of the culture of Tiangua within a communicational process. As a starting point, this study understands that eating habits and consumption within this society tend to indicate subjects, social positions, religiosity, ethnicity; as far as gastronomic practices are loaded with symbols that translate actions within a universe permeated by conditions such as power and lifestyle. The research is based on folk communication, language and cultural studies, based on the understanding that consumerist practices not only act as a symbolic cultural production, but also as a means of communication, object of construction and maintenance of collective and social memory through dissemination of messages in different methods and platforms influenced by the consumption of this delicacy. The research is qualitative, of exploratory character and makes a cut among the nine municipalities that comprise the Ibiapabana region to delimit the city of the investigated object. The analysis is made from ethnographic, bibliographic, documentary and interview research in a communicational perspective. Therefore, what should be identified in this thesis is the sum of the communicative relationship with food rules with the history and social memory of a people. As a result, it is understood that the food in this community has a direct relationship with culture and identity, qualifying as a source of communication. This study shows how local subjects have appropriated means of communication over the years to transmit information about their group, its history.