Entre o passado e a “modernidade”: uso e ressignificação do espaço público Praça Dom Pedro II - Manaus/AM

Abstract

Taking an Anthropology and Archaeology interdisciplinary approach, this research analyzes the uses and counter-uses that certain individuals make of Dom Pedro II Square, historical and archaeological heritage of the city of Manaus, as possessors of the right to benefit from public spaces. This enables to classify the square as a “total social fact”, in which multiple dimensions can be observed, like economical, sacred, aesthetic and morphological, that are present in the relations stablished by the State and its users. The study is based on cultural material, represented by archaeological and historical traces, in field observations of the uses and misuses and in open interviews. Given the ethnography, it studies the changes occurred with the gentrification process along the years in the Historic Center of Manaus, what leads to a “place warfare”, in which we have the political actions aiming at the protection and the requalification of this asset, in opposition certain individuals are found, mostly marginalized, such as prostitutes, street vendors and homeless people that use and give a new meaning to this space