Romaria do Bom Jesus da Lapa: reprodução social da família e identidade de gênero feminina.

Abstract

This thesis has as its subject of study the woman in the Bom Jesus da Lapa Pilgrimage by emphasizing gender relations and analysing pilgrimages as a social reproduction of the ideology of patriarchal family and feminine gender identity. It is set in Bom Jesus da Lapa festival, which has been taking place for 323 years in the city located in western Bahia. The subjects of the research are pilgrim women from 50 to 70 years old that have been participating for more than five consecutive years in the aforementioned festival. They are from Bahia, Minas Gerais, Sao Paulo, Goias and Espirito Santo. Five Brazilian estates that report a higher rate of female participation in this religious event. We used the following methodologies as means of data collection: research of the literature, qualitative approach, and field and desk researches. We also applied techniques such as participant observations and semi-structured interviews. We aimed to analyse how the socio-cultural changes that are taking place in society articulates with the gender relations and the dynamics of Catholicism in popular Catholic devotions, especially in the Bom Jesus da Lapa pilgrimage. It emphasises the impacts of such articulations in the conceptions of gender and its relations to the pilgrimage itself or even beyond it as, for instance, in the pilgrim women's everyday relationships. It also asks what their roles in the pilgrimage are and what place they occupy in relation to the socio-cultural changes that occur in society. It finally examines how the pilgrim women perceive the space of pilgrimage in relation to a daily domestic life that challenges them as, in some moments, they become closer to or more distant from the gender identity that arises in a society where the submission of women to men is a key feature. According to the interviews and to the theoretical frameworks we used, we concluded that Bom Jesus da Lapa festival is a space of social reproduction of family structure as well as of feminine gender identity. In this pilgrimage, we can see a contrast in the redefinition of the role and profile of pilgrim women once it alternates between permanence and transformation of the gender identity proper to patriarchy.