WHEN THE FACTORY BECAME A SHOPPING CENTER:

HERITAGE AND MEMORY OF WORKERS IN SOROCABA/SP

Abstract

In recent decades, old factory buildings - mostly weaving mills - have been used for other purposes. Thus, the cultural heritage associated with factory work loses not only its original function, but also as a propitiator of the construction of a working class memory and identity. In Sorocaba, a city in the interior of São Paulo state, known in the past as "Manchester Paulista", the buildings of the old weavings, in English architecture, have been converted into shopping malls or hypermarkets. This article seeks to discuss the cultural heritage of the workers and how to produce other articulations for the constitution of an emancipating memory of the working class based on other strategies that encompass, including, the constitution of immaterial heritages.