MARRIAGE AND SURVIVAL STRATEGIES OF WORKING CLASS FAMILIES IN THE AGRICULTURE OF SÃO PAULO

Abstract

Within the larger context of reconstructing the individual trajectories and family strategies of women active in agricultural work in the municipality of Pederneiras, in the State of São Paulo, one particular moment is focused, namely marriage. Marriage constitutes a particulary critical event in people's lives and those of their families, through which some fundamental interests which are the building blocks of domestic life become explicit. The analysis of these diverging interests makes it possible to draw a quite complex image of family life in which conflict and cohesion appear as opposite faces of the same coin. Moreover, one perceives the way in which historical time impinges on individual and family time, structuring unequal living alternatives at every moment. In this sense, it is shown how the agricultural transformations of the region, in defining certain possibilities of making a living, bring about changes in the meaning of marriage as an alternative for the lower-class woman.