Cultural trade at the Historic Site of Olinda

Abstract

This present essay comes from the ethnography that we carried out in Olinda, based on the cultural market of the historic site of the municipality. The ethnography developed, proposed another way of seeing the historic site of Olinda, on several commercial spaces of the place, taking into account the people who build and give life to those places. Producing images and videos in the construction of the framework of stories told by cultural economy actors, allowing us to reflect and rethink about the place and its relationship with culture based on ethnographic research.

The essay allowed us to build a moving scenario, which present daily cultural commercial points of the Historic Site of Olinda, around a script, focusing on some spaces in the municipality, they were: Eufrásio Barbosa Market, Ribeira Market, Craft Market of Sé, Ecological Handicraft Store and the Feirinha do Alto da Sé, located in the neighborhoods of Varadouro, Carmo and Alto da Sé, respectively. It is possible to understand the operation of local commerce in Olinda, making us see that it goes far beyond a sale and purchase system, with a whole cultural context behind it. Conducting this research has opened our eyes to seeing all the positives and negatives that traders face every day. And listening to all the traders' life stories until the time they got to work in the locality, made us understand that, in most cases, the tradition is still quite strong in these localities, where everything is passed on from generation to generation.

The presented essay used photographs as a strategy for a better understanding of the cultural aspects that relate the city and commerce, with the aim of exposing the landscape (representative of the urban space), culture (the works produced by artisans) and commerce. (the strong link between the city and culture), thus noting the notions of cultural power in the essay, since it brings together and associates commerce and culture.

The work was carried out in April 2023, over five field immersions.