Resumo (PT):
Abstract (EN):
The aim of the present work is to develop a reconceptualisation of the social and cultural
influences on literacy based on the case study of the population of Porto at the end of the
nineteenth century. Usually literacy means a positive fact in the vital need for the modernisation
of contemporary societies (economic growth, industrialisation, wealth, productivity, political
stability and urbanidation), which was not the configuration of Portuguese social structure
(25.5% literacy rate in 1900) or Porto’s social structure (52.5% literacy rate in 1900). The
possible expansion of industry or the very developed trade and bank sectors in the city of Porto
were an “island” of modernity among the strong sociocultural characteristics of rurality and
the predominance of primary production in the economic structure of Portugal. At first sight,
it would be easy to design the literacy profile of Portuguese society if we took into account
only the cold figures of the official statistics. The results presented are based on the categorisation
of the signatures of the people who took part in 1198 marriage ceremonies certified in the city
of Porto in the year 1890. In an epoch where there were multiple signature styles and at the
same time attempts to standardise handwriting, the newly-weds’ signatures on the marriage
record became a privileged and reliable indicator of the social profile of writing skills usage as
well as an indicator of literacy levels, connected with the handwriting and orthographic
characteristics evident in the signatures. The relevance of this option resides in the path to endow
our analysis with patterns of coherence, comparability and graduation and in the understanding
and critical interpretation of the results. The social analysis of Porto shows literacy rates shaped
by the strong influence and regulation of factors such as gender, place of birth, emigration and
professional occupation inasmuch as it interacts with social structures and the process of social
inequality. Incidentally, it will be among women that we can find empirically the
consubstantiation of common-sense perceptions concerning the obstacles to literacy, namely
the low attendance and the early dropout of primary schooling, the distinct gap between the
literacy levels of the younger and adult generations, the entropic effects that the female rural
exodus provoked in the literacy rates of the city, the strong correlation between the literacy rates
and the socio-occupational hierarchy and the cheapness of women’s non-qualified work. Among
the men, we register specific behaviours, namely the quite homogeneous literacy rates between
age cohorts, the positive effects of the rural exodus on the distribution of literacy skills in the
city and the resistance to the transformation of craftwork into proletarian jobs which is deeply
connected with the maintenance of important literacy rates by the workers of traditional crafts.
Idioma:
Inglês
Tipo (Avaliação Docente):
Científica
Notas:
28th Session of the International Standing Conference for the History of Education, Umea, 2006