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Resumo

This paper deals with narratives about witches and witchcraft as narrated by the inhabitants of Lagoa da Conceiçao, a village colonised by Azoreans, in the Southern Brazilian coastal area. In these narratives, which were related as real events, the witch appears as a powerful female figure who is responsible for ailments, sickness and deaths among Lagoa's residents. These histories originated in mediaeval European imagery, but they are still alive in this village, despite an accelerated process of change and urbanisation, because they found support in the way of living and thinking as well as in the construction of gender in that community. The narratives about witchcraft tell us about an informal female power that is not recognised in the models presented by the informers. By analysing the differences in the meaning of the narratives of men and women, we can find forms of construction of gender identity in this culture.

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