Critical consciousness and resistance: Freirean reflections on the agroecology movement formation in Araponga, Minas Gerais, Brazil (original) (raw)
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Agrarian Social Movements and the Making of Agrodiesel Moral Territories in Northeast Brazil
Phd Dissertation, 2013
In response to widespread concerns about the socio-ecological impacts of agrofuel production and development, particularly for food security, efforts have been made internationally to implement more sustainable forms of producing agrofuels. Brazil’s National Program for the Production and Use of Agrodiesel (PNPB), launched in 2004, is one such attempt. Promoted as a socially and environmentally responsible program, the PNPB was made possible through unprecedented alliances between the ‘postneoliberal’ Brazilian state, the agribusiness sector, and social movements such as the Rural Trade Union’s Movement (MSTTR) and the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST). In this research, I critically analyze the unexpected engagement of social movements in the making of agrodiesel territories in semi-arid Bahia, Northeastern Brazil by examining the territorial and moral processes and practices that underlie the production of castor bean (mamona) for agrodiesel. The methodology adopted comprised participant observation, informal and semi-structured interviews (n=74) with leaders and members of the MST and the MSTTR in the territories of the Chapada Diamantina and Irecê, in central Bahia. Interviews were also conducted with representatives of family farming cooperatives, government institutions, and agrodiesel companies (Petrobras) in the two study areas and in Salvador, capital of Bahia. Research methods also included the 1 2 collection and critical discourse analysis of archival and other secondary data sources from public and private institutions. Drawing mainly from cultural geography and political ecology literatures, I argue that social movement leaders enable the making of agrodiesel territories mainly through their role as ‘agrodiesel gatekeepers’ – as legal interveners, managers, and caregivers. Family farmers tend to enable agrodiesel territorial expansion and to disrupt agrodiesel territorial management by not complying with moral prescriptions of loyalty. I see farmers’ disloyalty towards their cooperatives as an everyday form of resistance against agrodiesel oppressive and exploitative practices. I suggest that the making of agrodiesel territories (re)produces gendered and racialized ‘(im)moral’ peasants and serves to better contain peasants’ movements. By critically analyzing how agrodiesel practices reproduce, homogenize and differentiate certain subjects, natures, and territories, I hope that this research contributes to politicize the moral geographies of agrodiesel development in semi- arid Bahia.
The Emergence of Agroecology as a Political Tool in the Brazilian Landless Movement
Local Environment
This study examines how and why socially excluded peasant farmers in the Brazilian Landless Movement (MST) transitioned to ecological agriculture, or agroecology. Utilising the photo-elicitation method, I investigate the Cooperativa Agropecuária Vista Alegre (COOPAVA), one of the first cooperatives of the MST to make this transition, which has become a point of reference for the Movement. I analyse the formation of COOPAVA through the lens of transition theory, their early years and experiments, transition to agroecological practices, and establishment of an alternative form of rural peasant life. Drawing from this analysis, I identify the major socio-technical factors shaping how COOPAVA has constructed an ecological development alternative in the context of the industrialisation and commodification of agriculture in Brazil and globally. And finally, I argue that through engaging the natural world degraded by the dominant agricultural model, the families of COOPAVA have developed agroecology as a political tool with which to construct autonomy, agency and livelihood – transforming themselves, and their relationships with nature, each other and society.
Contradictions between impressive levels of economic growth and the persistence of poverty and inequality are perhaps nowhere more evident than in rural Brazil. While Brazil might appear to be an example of the potential harmony between large-scale, export-oriented agribusiness and small-scale family farming, high levels of rural resistance contradict this vision. In this introductory paper, we synthesize the literature on agrarian resistance in Brazil and situate recent struggles in Brazil within the Latin American context more broadly. We highlight seven key characteristics of contemporary Latin American resistance, which include: the growth of international networks, the changing structure of state-society collaboration, the deepening of territorial claims, the importance of autonomy, the development of alternative economies, continued opposition to dispossession, and struggles over the meaning of nature. We argue that by analyzing rural mobilization in Brazil, this collection offers a range of insights relevant to rural contention globally. Each contribution in this collection increases our understanding of alternative agricultural production, largescale development projects, education, race and political parties in the contemporary agrarian context.
Agroecology and Radical Grassroots Movements’ Evolving Moral Economies
I focus on the role of agroecology in rural proletarian social movements in this article. First, I highlight these movements’ conception of agroecology as an important element of their political ideology. Second, I explore the value of agroecology in helping maintain the permanence of the peasantry. Third, I show that rural proletarian movements emphasize agroecology because it is key to attaining sovereignty. I draw upon the geographic lenses of territory, the production of space, and autonomous geographies in positing these arguments. Throughout the article, I draw upon a case study of the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement, one of the most vocal agroecological social movements, to illustrate these arguments.
Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 2014
Based on field research in southern Brazil, this paper examines successful experiences of encampment, and especially of two agricultural cooperatives of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) as part of the solidarity economy. These coops exemplified collective searches for better living conditions to respond to people's needs and hopes, beside and beyond the market economy. The paper thus explores (1) community dynamics and movement-building among MST participants as they interact with one another and are shaped by daily practices in their collective struggle for land access and justice; (2) how they foster alternative imaginaries (vision, hope, projects), forms of production, and social reproduction that nurture greater autonomy, solidarity, cooperation, and democratic participation; and (3) how various forms of cooperation allow MST participants to appropriate, defy and transform dominant norms and practices in their everyday lives. The latter process is crucial for researchers and activists interested in social change since these forces are contributing to opening up spaces that allow the emergence of new norms and values, intertwined with new practices and ways of being in the making, despite existing obstacles and challenges.
The process of re-peasantization in Brazil occurs primarily through the peasant struggle for land and agrarian reform. Adopting a geographic method and using territorialization as a central axis of study, this paper analyzes the history of peasant formation, particularly focusing on the formation of the Landless Rural Workers' Movement (MST), the peasant movement that has most contributed to the process of recreating the peasantry through land occupations. The process of re-peasantization occurring over the last 30 years is supported by data showing that more than a million families have been settled through agrarian reform. However, these fractional territorial gains have not eliminated the subordination of peasants by capitalized land rent. Using data from the most recent Agricultural Census, we highlight the situation of dependence to which Brazilian peasants are submitted. The hegemony of agribusiness has provoked a reflux in the peasant struggle for land and agrarian reform...
An education in gender and agroecology in Brazil’s Landless Rural Workers’ Movement
Routledge eBooks, 2019
This article explores the implications of a blended agroecology and gender education within Brazil's Landless Rural Workers' Movement (MST). The discussion is first situated within MST's struggle for land and for peasant families' livelihoods, generally, and under neoliberalism, specifically. Central to the struggle against neoliberalism have been critical educational models that evolved towards agroecology and a gender-equality-oriented pedagogy. Women have played important roles in the movement's growth, particularly the development of the education sector. Using data from a literature review, observations, and interviews, the article argues that MST's education, focused on agroecology and accompanied by gender-oriented pedagogy, empowers women and men to disrupt the traditional sexual division of labour in rural communities, and within land struggles, more generally.