Abstract

PERALTA, Elsa. “We’re all seafarers”: an ethnography of the (in)visibilities of power in the social representation of the local past in Ílhavo. Etnográfica [online]. 2010, vol.14, n.3, pp.443-464. ISSN 0873-6561.

Taking as an empirical basis the process of construction of a “memory of the sea” in Ílhavo, with particular emphasis on cod fishing, this paper discusses how notions of identity and belonging are constructed by establishing selective images of a past which is activated according to the power agendas of certain groups. In the example analyzed here, the local identity is articulated by a narrative of maritime evocation that reproduces the class identity held by people occupying dominant positions in the hierarchy of the activity now represented. By making “their” past ostensibly visible, these people have made invisible the extreme asymmetries involved in the practice of this activity, thus claiming themselves its main protagonists.

Keywords : memory; identity; class; power; visibility; Ílhavo.

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