Gente Livre: Consideração e Pessoa no Baixo Sul da Bahia

This ethnographic essay focuses on the lifestyles of the inhabitants of the coastal mangroves of southern Bahia (NE Brazil). The narrative is structured by the anthropological analysis of the processes that constitute the person. Its point of departure is the concept of "consideration", the principle that attributes reality to interpersonal relations (be they familial, domestic, friendship, patronage, etc.). Two related themes receive extensive treatment: the modes of conjugality and the modes of control of the land. The reader's attention will be called both to the shape of the life histories of the men and women that the authors befriended in southern Bahia and to the way these can contribute towards deepening contemporary debates in anthropological theory about relatedness, namely in the form of a critique of the sociocentric and intellectualist dispositions of the discipline.