Valeur marchande, amour maternal et survie : aspects de la circulation des enfants dans un bidonville brésilien

Abstract

Two years of ethnological field work among 70 subproletarian families in a Brazilian slum (Porto Alegre) revealed a high rate child circulation. The placement of children in adoptive homes can be considered part of this survival and reproduction strategies. But child circulation also depends on the system of obligations at play between relevant adults : mother, father, adoptive mother. By focusing on these adults their motivations and the conflicts between them, we hope to go beyond economic explanations to reveal cultural dispositions, inherited in all probability from a popular culture developped over generations in historically specific circumstances, to meet with the situation of chronic poverty.