Regional history under the civilizing processes perspective: research possibilities based on the case of Monte Alegre – PR

Abstract

This paper studied the history of Monte Alegre company town (current municipality of Telêmaco Borba – PR), owned by the Klabin Industries, seeking to understand how the region known as the Tibagi’s hinterland became a reference to Brazilian industrialization and urbanization in the middle of the 20th century. Under the civilizing processes theory perspective, it was carried out a content analysis of the Hellê Vellozo Fernandes chronicles, published in the O Tibagi newspaper between 1948 and 1964, aiming to identify the sensitivities that guided the civilization process in that social formation and the life spheres to which her publications was directed, as also to understand the processes of behavioral adequacy and resistance actions. The analysis results, besides allow knowing aspects of the social and emotional relations of the figuration in question, indicate the newspaper as a potential accelerator element of the civilizing process, since its narratives works as pressures that direct the behavioral transformation, changing the pace and the contents of learning in its scope. The study also points out that the journalistic narratives’ reception process has heterogeneous characteristics, varying the meaning according to the different classes involved – being the middle layers the most affected, pressured by the desire for prestige and the fear of losing the social position already achieved.