A construção social da velhice na cidade de Maputo: o caso dos residentes do Bairro Luís Cabral

Abstract

This report analyzes the daily practices of the elderly in Bairro Luís Cabral. The research focused on the observation and analysis of interactions between groups of elderly people, their families and members of the National Institute for Social Action (INSS). The focus was on the basic subsidies allocated in this neighborhood in order to understand how groups of people, categorized from different categories, interact on the basis of political programs. Studies on the phenomenon of aging revolve around the assumption of the life cycle, allowing, on the one hand, to understand how biological determinants are inseparable from the social and, on the other hand, how is the day-to-day interactions between the the elderly and the community in general reveals contexts where identity processes are established. These studies do not allow, in this way, to explain how the elderly are positioned before society and the dynamics of the space they occupy in the community. Ethnographic research has enabled, on the one hand, to understand that the act of aging is seen as a symbol that mediate responses about the trajectories of their daily lives, where it is through memory that the elderly retain their life experience and deposit their hope maintaining and expanding networks of relationships and strengthening solidarity. On the other hand, it allowed us to understand how these memories also guarantee the maintenance of the position of the elderly as heads of families, mediators between the living and the ancestors, as well as mediators of conflicts between their families. (TRADUÇÃO NOSSA)