A ordem simbólica da metrópole: aspectos de uma identidade goianiense

Abstract

Cultural Geography emphasizes the symbolic dimension of ali human activity and thinks about the sense, which men give to their environment. This work deals with the relation between people and the city of Goiânia at the construction of a social and spatial identity. This geographic identity is based on landscapes, stories, representations of a community about itself and its place. The cultural landscape is, itself, conceived as representation, formed symbolically and, in part, unconsciously. This investigation emphasizes this feature of the goianiense identity, seeking to see it, also, in the metropolitan identity context and the Brazilian cultural identity. Empirical data were collected by interviews, in two previously chosen places of Goiânia, in arder to perceive in the geographical space of the city, in its daily life and in the imaginary, symbolic elements of the culture. The weight of rural aspects on the self-image of local identification and the visibility of the effects of the female prevalence in the demographic structure of the Capital were corroborated. Furthermore, provincial features were revealed beside images of a "Big City". The dialectical method, which understands geographical space as material expression of the social relations, supports this research, in arder to understand the geographic character of a range of symbolic manifestations. The extemality of spatial organization dialogues, thus, with what man, its subject, has as an individual character, and at the same time in its deeper stratums, has as an universal character: his psyche.