Popular strategies of survival: Mutualism in the republican Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

This article is about friendly societies movement in the city of Rio de Janeiro, seen as one of the strategies chosen by the workers to face poverty and to improve life conditions. The article intends to offer a general overview about the mutual movement in the Brazilian capital at that moment, considering different aspects as its dimensions, lifetime, trajectory, and main characteristics. At the same time, it aims to stress sectors excluded from the movement, whose identity was based on the established frontiers that separated distinct social sectors. The article intents, as well, to promote a dialogue with other researches about friendly societies in Brazil, and especially the ones produced abroad. We used, as the main sources, two statistic series never studied before, about the phenomenon in Rio de Janeiro, besides other group of sources.