LUIZ DE CASTRO FARIAS

ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDY BY THE FAIRS OF BAHIA - 1949

Abstract

This work deals with an anthropological expedition on popular street markets, carried out by Luiz de Castro Faria, in 1949, in Bahia. It aims to discuss the theoretical vision of the anthropologist at a time when social culture, as an object of anthropological study, began to dominate the field of social sciences. The analysis showed that Castro Faria, under the focus of works such as Franz Boas, saw the weekly markets as an economic process of socialization of people and expression of cultural diversity, geographically located – he studied ecological anthropology. From the mid-twentieth century until its end, theoretical transformations took place, such as the Marxist one, which valued economic relations, superimposed on cultural ones. However, at the end of the century, local and global relationships have been revised with the worsening of climate issues, showing that the global is born from the local. As a history of anthropology, Castro Faria's work becomes a reference for these current studies that rethink the place of culture in society.