This article focuses on the dynamics between family strategies and agricultural production. Our objective is to analyze how some families strategically mobilized their more or less limited resources to consolidate very particular kinship networks centered on sugar mills masters. We use the concepts of kinship networks, families and local-level strategies, based on micro analytic methodology. The study is based on some couples who were married in the Sapopemba sugar mill Chapel, in the civil parish of Irajá, in Rio de Janeiro, in the beginnings of the 18th century. Our main sources are parish records (weddings, baptisms and lands). We try to show the strategic exchanges among consanguineous, matrimonial and ritual kin, and that some 'unequal marriages' would have been the starting point of a strategic bond between agricultural workers and land holders, thereby creating bridges between the world of the work, land use and kinship.
social networks; kinship networks; agricultural production; Rio de Janeiro; XVIII Century.