Mulheres-mães do Rio Negro, sexualidades femininas e maternidades de pessoas nascidas na margem esquerda do rio.

Abstract

This research presents experiences of sexuality and motherhood of women-mothers living in the cities of Manaus and Santa Isabel do Rio Negro, in the state of Amazonas, based on ethnographic research conducted between 2018 and 2023, a period traversed by the pre-pandemic and pandemic contexts of COVID-19. The research follows the trajectories of six interlocutors (Juliana, Sara, Liberdade, Bárbara, Melissa, and Miriam) and their family, affective, and community networks, seeking to identify categories activated in daily life to name relationships, body, desire, motherhood, work, respectability, violence, and autonomy. In dialogue with Brazilian feminist anthropology and with Latin American and Amazonian productions, the ethnography describes moralities expressed in ordinary encounters. Starting from the notion of moralities, it was possible to identify that Amazonian sexualities and motherhoods constitute dimensions intertwined with the production of life. The analysis results from a prolonged ethnographic process drastically impacted by the pandemic, based on participant observation, ordinary coexistence, movement between homes, bars, workplaces, and social networks, as well as formal and informal conversations that accompanied biographical transformations over five years. By articulating a dense description of interactions with the framework of morality studies, the thesis constructs Amazonian moralities as an analytical tool derived from the field, allowing us to understand how women-mothers produce continuity, belonging, and meaning in contexts marked by territorial inequalities and persistent classificatory legacies.