Understanding that Amazonian cities are formed by urban and riverside characteristics,
which make up the mobile social life on the islands of Combu and Cotijuba, is essential
to understanding the ways of life, values and habits that are shaped by the river and the
forest, not just as a place for the flow of people or passage, goods and survival, but of
ideas, singularities and symbols that are part of the riverside way of living. In view of the
above, the main objective of this research was to analyze how tourist mobility develops
on the islands of Combu and Cotijuba, taking into account the dynamics of displacement
and the socioeconomic potential of the symbolic and cultural relationships of different
social groups and their relationship with rivers, and as specific objectives: identify and
analyze the importance of tourist and leisure activities linked to the dimension and/or
experience with rivers in the Amazon; and finally, analyze the role of the landscape for
the islands of Combu and Cotijuba in the constitution of tourist activity, in the sense that
the experience of the journey can provide contact with the landscape of the destination.
Of a qualitative nature, ethnography was used as the guiding thread capable of making
me understand the local reality from an inside and outside perspective. From the inside
when I, with my riverside roots, let myself be influenced by the experience provided in
the field. And from the outside when I observe the phenomenon as a researcher, trying
not to let myself be influenced by my roots. It was through the ethnographic approach
that I, as a researcher, was able to base field practice, facilitating the interrelationship
between myself and local agents and their experiences. Auto ethnography is also used as
a technique capable of relating my experiences, with those of the interviewees, in the field
of relationships that are constructed and reconstructed during the analysis. Observation
and records (field diary, photographs, videos, among others) were able to relate to each
other in a combined approach with interviews, conversations and notes. The investigation
was also guided by the use of mobile methods, so that I could be together with the research
participants and thus understand the phenomena that occur during movement,
fundamental to interpreting riverside experiences in the Amazon. It was possible to
observe that although movement and moving together is crucial for the research and for
each moment chosen by me, such as yoga, the chocolate trail, scheduled visits and
moments following groups or individual people, it is worth highlighting that the non movement was also part of the research and it talks a lot about people and their individual
and collective experiences. When your body is still and watching the river, it makes you
move, as the river continues to flow, carrying stories that are constructed and
reconstructed in this dynamic. The boats continue to move, ideas and thoughts continue,
little by little, in constant movement.
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