Queijo Cabacinha do Araguaia: comensalidade, mediação e imaginários na fronteira entre Mato Grosso e Goiás

Abstract

This doctoral research emerged from the possibilities of thinking about interdisciplinary articulations between the fields of Food and Communication, through a guiding thread that enables dialogical interfaces between them, fostering and acting as a catalyst for new reflections: here, the concept of commensality, and consequently the underlying social relations inherent in eating, being at the table, from the perspective of social sciences, through a cultural lens. The main objective of this work is to investigate the "Queijo Cabacinha do Araguaia" (Araguaia Cabacinha Cheese) as a communicational mediator and promoter of imaginaries based on the life stories of social actors living in the border region between Alto Araguaia-MT and Santa Rita do Araguaia-GO, composing a mosaic that can encompass a broad landscape on the subject. Commensality is understood within the logic of the communication field as a mediation process, and food as a mediating actor. Thus, it is assumed that the subjects of this research, through their life stories, can reveal marks of their transitional relationship between space, time, identity, and consumption, mediating through commensality, with the "Queijo Cabacinha do Araguaia" as a central actor in the process. The main theoretical references are: identity by Hall (1997), Roberto DaMatta (1976); consumption: Canclini (1999), Douglas and Isherwood (2006), and Bauman (2008); space: Milton Santos (2006), Tuan (1983), Arbaret-Schulz et al. (2017), and Foucher (1991); temporalities and phenomenology of perception: Merleau-Ponty (1999); commensality: Flandrin and Montanari (2018), Fischler (2011), Câmara Cascudo (1967, 2014), and Doria (2009). For communicational bonds, Martin-Barbero (2009) and Latour (2005). It is a qualitative and empirical research, based on ethnographic method (GEERTZ, 2008; DAMATTA, 1978) and used the methodology of life history (BERTAUX, 1997; BECKER, 1994; BRIOSCHI, TRIGO, 1987), employing open interviews with research subjects - actors in the commensal cycle of the "Queijo Cabacinha do Araguaia" -, photographs, documents, and observation (BAUER; GASKELL, 2010). The investigation realized that the "Queijo Cabacinha do Araguaia," as a mediating actor, is central to the experiences and memories of the characters who contributed with their life stories. It is part of the landscape of the local imaginary and is indeed inseparable from the idea of the Araguaia border as an imagined place. Moreover, it is an element that favors the transition between literal and symbolic bridges. Although there are other similar cheeses in the country and the world, the "Queijo Cabacinha do Araguaia" is unique, to the extent that, beyond its terroir, it is a cultural element that inhabits the phenomenological time of the commensals of its cycle.