The spatiality of aging in the autobiographical memory of elderly people living in camps and settlements in Pontal do Paranapanema - São Paulo - Brazil

Abstract

The main objective of this thesis is to understand how the experience of
rural aging is constructed and to identify the resistance strategies and spatiality
developed by the elderly in the context of struggle, conquest and formation of the
Gercina Mendes camp and the Água Sumida settlement. It also discusses how aging
is seen in geography and its relationship with the spatial and social dimensions of
subjects. Starting from a theoretical framework for the geography of aging, we propose
an understanding of how spatial concepts play a role in the examination of aging in
areas of agrarian conflict, justifying a relational analysis, focusing on multiple social
subjects, and beyond the world of adults. For that, we take as a central axis the
relationship between aging and space in the trajectory of elderly people in situations
of encampment and settlement in Pontal do Paranapanema - São Paulo. Oral history,
memory reconstruction and use of the field notebook were strategies to generate aging
data. Our thesis raises the hypothesis that aging builds specific spaces related to
spatial and temporal use in camps and settlements, where work is the basis for the
elderly in rural areas to perceive old age. These subjects produce spatiality through
their bodies, practices and spatially related social relations. Houses and lots are
understood as spaces of memory and work, and the land as a means of reproducing
life. In general, the work presents the multiple possibilities of studying age through
geography, seeking to broaden and deepen the understanding of aging from the
dimensions of social subjects and space, understood here through principles of
inseparability and multidimensionality