Contrastes na terra do café: São Paulo entre a publicidade e a crônica nos anos 1920

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss how certain places of sociability, especially those ones dedicated to eating and drinking, showed significant changes in urban life. This research tries to understand the modern sociability ways, in which eating out, more than a natural attitude that aims at eating for necessity, was along with symbolic values and social distinction. Besides the formation of taste and social distinction, it can be seen that hygienic standards and the medical discourse were altogether in many spheres of society: homes, structural facilities, body care and health, and commercial establishments. These aspects have pointed out to food as a practice of leisure and social life, which agitated the urban life of the metropolis under construction. Also, we see an adaptation of São Paulo to the so-called civilized world. For the development of this research, issues of the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo from between 1920 and 1929 were investigated and tabulated, understanding that the periodical press has acted in a pedagogical way in this attempt of including São Paulo in the civilized world, as well has monitored the new urban practices, notably through the chronicles and advertisements of commercial establishments dedicated to eating and drinking: restaurants, patisseries, dairies, candy shops, tearooms. Therefore, the intention is to verify the differences between what was in publicity and the control of social life through the chronicles, comprehending them as brief texts dedicated to treat about matters of daily urban life.