“ENTRE “SANTA QUITÉRIA VELHA” E “SANTA QUITÉRIA NOVA”: Uma compreensão sociológica do lugar das águas na história de uma pequena cidade maranhense”.

Abstract

This work aims to understand the narratives of residents of Santa Quitéria do Maranhão about the place of water in the formation of the city and identity, economic and cultural experiences of this small municipality in the region of Baixo Parnaíba Maranhense, Maranhão. Through a bibliographical study and field research stages, the work intends to put on screen the social place occupied by water in the composition of Maranhão cities, their displacement processes and contemporary public issues. In this perspective, the research seeks to understand how economic, political and social development processes significantly alter small Brazilian cities and how residents of these contexts represent and describe their interfaces with the waters that permeate their history and ways of life. In this investigative path, the qualitative research, carried out through the application of interviews with residents of the first administrative headquarters, the analysis of documents and the production of a photographic collection helped us in the investigation of the research problem, pointing out multiple lights on the object of study . Privileging a sociological approach to riverside cities, narratives about modernity and development are connected to municipal waters, stimulating a series of conflicts around moral conduct and natural resources that shape the contemporary dynamics of small towns in Maranhão. We found in the research that the residents of small towns like Santa Quitéria cyclically experience the movement of water in different ways, associating it with migration, internal displacements within the urban fabric, as well as disputes over water in the face of the installation of agricultural modernization that arrives the green areas of these municipalities.