Apagamentos, resistências e transformações dos saberes medicinais com plantas em Goiânia

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the dynamics of erasure, resistance, and transformation of traditional knowledge associated with medicinal plants in the urban context of Goiânia, GO. Recognizing the use of medicinal plants as an ancestral practice resulting from the interaction between dierent worldviews and the natural landscape, the research discusses how this knowledge persists and adapts in the urban landscape, considering the cultural relations of dominion over nature and the consequences of urbanization on the perceptions and representations of traditional knowledge associated with it. Although planned to break with its rural past, Goiânia maintains manifestations of these practices. Therefore, the focus lies on understanding the cultural importance of this knowledge and its intrinsic relationship with the spaces where it is practiced, resignied, and disseminated. This study investigates how this knowledge circulates and adapts in the urban landscape of Goiânia's neighborhoods, such as Central, Leste Vila Nova, and Vila Itatiaia, analyzing key spaces like backyards and medicinal gardens, important places of practice, memory, and transmission, and spaces for the commercialization of herbs and natural remedies, such as markets, fairs, and root shops. To understand the living dynamics of this knowledge and its manifestations in the city, the research sought contact with various social actors involved in this universe, such as raizeiros (traditional healers/herb sellers), merchants, and consumers. Thus, this study's research process is based on the interplay between theoretical and practical elds, combining a literature review with an emphasis on orality and ethnographic research, including observation, interviews, and the production of images such as drawings and photographs. Among the ndings, it was noted that, paradoxically, industrial inuence and commodication, while fragmenting the connection with nature, can enable the maintenance of this knowledge in new formats. The investigated spaces function as access points where knowledge is manifested, negotiated, and resignied, maintaining its importance for identity, collective memory, and local cultural practices.