The battle: contribution of knowledge of women exercising prostitution in Salvador, Bahia

Abstract

The article aims to problematize the forms and modes of socialization and agency built by women and other actors in the scenario of prostitution, as well as to perceive and enunciate the knowledge and learning that arise in this social practice, that is, in the battle of life. The research had an ethnographic perspective, including the participation of 10 formal interlocutors, aged between 30 and 65 years and they were in the battle for life since adolescence - an expression they used to refer to working as prostitutes on the streets. The theoretical framework is anchored in the field of autobiographical studies in education and an interdisciplinary perspective of analysis, combining orientations from the fields of psychology (when dealing with family contexts and construction of subjectivities) and anthropology (considering socialization as an essential axis for the composition of an ethnography of interactions). The results pointed to a category that seems to explain in-depth the experience of winning/making life on the street, the battle, so it is an expression that points out the way of doing and building a life on the street and in prostitution. The expression "I am in the battle, I am in the life," as well as the reading of the meanings and meanings attributed to this expression by the women points in this research a category that expresses the work done by the women prostitutes in the street, in the Center of Salvador, Bahia.