Harpoon, nets and overboard workers: notes about whaling in Paraíba.

Abstract

This paper presents the social processes that involve fishing activities in the municipality of Lucena, on the coast of Paraíba. To this end, I highlight some socio-historical periods that shaped the jobs of workers who deal with the maritime resources that exist there. In this scenario, whale predation and artisanal fishing have been presented as seasonal and almost complementary activities for many years. The workers who launched themselves into the sea and those who stayed on land, cutting and shredding the cetaceans in Costinha, dealt with operative patterns that rearranged social relations in that context. An analysis of the peak and the decline of whaling activity can point out how certain economic processes cross and mark the trajectories of the human groups involved. The division of labor and the technical processes seized by the whaling industry have to some extent shaped identities and multiple social rhetoric.