To watch and to tell: On forms of observing, narrating and judging movements

Abstract

Based on research in two rural areas in the state of Minas Gerais, Southeastern Brazil, this article approaches ways of moving, and of mutual and systematic observation of movements, in the daily life of multi-local moral communities. It also approaches narrative forms and the dynamics of moral judgment that cannot be separated from those ways of moving and observing movements. Narratives and moral judgments actually constitute movements, as people move to narrate or to listen to narratives, to judge and to listen to judgments, thus affording further observation and narrative. This systematic way of moving, knowing movements, re-creat- ing events through narratives, making moral critique and governing one’s own or other’s movements, becomes denser in moments or places with an exceptional amount of movement (movimento) or liveliness (animação). It can be described as dynamic and polemical mapping procedures, in which houses and the movements between them become a focus of much attention and elaboration. Thus, houses are approached as places one can, in various manners, leave (or not leave), come to (or avoid coming to), and stay (for a lot or a little time), and inside of which there are movements that are also significantly observed and commented upon. This approach intends to contribute to an ethnographic starting point regarding movements as sociality or modes of sociation, thus avoiding predefinition of spatial classification grids and forms of categorizing movements, as well as avoiding to assume causal relations concerning previously established domains of social life.