"Here is the place of progress": producing clothes and meanings in dispute by the Confecções do Agreste Modernity

Abstract

This paper will discuss some issues related to the new dynamics of transformation of work and the economy in northeastern Brazil, a region called “Agreste Pernambucano”. The research I do is about the so-called "Polo de Confecções do Agreste Pernambucano , " a region that is emerging on the national scene by having very high rates of economic growth based mainly on household production of clothes. Here is a reflection on the socio-productive configuration from the economic strategies, values and expectations of two distinct groups who are immersed in the Agreste Pernambucano productive arrangement: the small family producers of clothes who coming from the countryside on one side and on the other those that constitute the economic elite of clothing, "sons of the land", whose identity is with their own city of Santa Cruz and with the commercial practice. However, from the 1990's some actors, such as SEBRAE with the political elite and great local entrepreneurs have been investing in mechanisms of "modernization" of this household economy, presenting narratives in favor of organizing the local market through the "modernization " of the production process and the formalization of domestic units in order to search the rationality of the profit. We will analyze here the contacts and conflicts between these two economic experiences, namely, that the typical household production and on the other side the entrepreneurs economic organization.