Os saberes populares da produção artesanal de doces por pequenos produtores de Juiz de Fora – MG: um olhar a partir da abordagem CTS

Abstract

We present the investigation of folk knowledge for the manufacture of homemade candies as a possibility of a STS (Science - Technology - Society) approach. We aim to understand how science and technology influenced the folk knowledge of homemade candy associates AGROJUF (Rural Family Agribusiness Manufacturers Association of Juiz de Fora) and how this process took place. From the possible changes of the handmade process influenced by the development of science and technology and placed under Brazilian law, we study the inclusion of folk knowledge in the classroom, covering in addition to the scientific aspects of the processes, the ways in which science, technology and society relate. Theoretically, this study fits in the researches made in Brazil which have as object the folk knowledge and their connections to science teaching scenario. Through literature review we found that there are few studies in the teaching of sciences that propose the rescue and recovery the folk knowledge and we detected the need to address the contradictions and transformations in the investigated knowledge. Supported by the theoretical and methodological framework of the French line Discourse Analysis, we conducted semi-structured interviews with five producers of homemade candies in the referred region to the constitution of the corpus analysis. As conditions to the interviews, the producers must participate in a Producers Association which includes the supervision of a technician connected to EMATER responsible for regularizing manufacturing processes. The respondents use recipes handed down through the generations and shared between group members and constitute a holder group of folk knowledge. We observed that science and technology influence the knowledge of interviewed, sometimes adding new tools and procedures, now serving as the basis for determining hygienists parameters for production, culminating in the withdrawal of some producers. Although the producers deem important scientific-technological and legal adjustments for product quality, their incorporation is also the result of the balance of power established between producers and the technicians, spokesperson of knowledge supported by the discourse of science, which conveys a institutionalized, legitimate, and therefore correct knowledge that must be accepted. The inclusion of such knowledge in the classroom allows observing how science, technology and society are related, as the scientific-technological and legal adaptations come as a result of the development of science and technology, changing considerably the knowledge of the investigated group.