Tecendo comentários ao artigo “Redescobrindo a família rural brasileira”, de Mauro Almeida

This is a comment on the article “Rediscovering the Brazilian rural family”, published by Mauro Almeida, in 1986, in the Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais. The publication stood out at the time and, even today, remains current by questioning central notions in the study of rural populations. Our objective was to resume the problem raised by Almeida about the multiplicity of analytical uses that the notion of rural family has, and to propose a dialogue with later academic works by the author and other Brazilian social scientists, seeking to show the current relevance of the debate.The rediscovery of the rural family proposed in the text discussed here remains an important theoretical and methodological reference for thinking about the diversity of models and forms of organi-zation of the rural populations, and for stressing the use of grand narratives and hermetic analytical categories in the understanding of a humanity plural.