Gentes e Florestas: pistas para imaginar outras agri-culturas

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the relationships between humans and nature within the context of the contemporary socio-environmental crisis, focusing on agroforestry systems as practices of resistance and re-existence in the Pampa biome, Brazil. Using cartography as a research-intervention method, the study maps agroforestry experiences in the region of the Escudo Cristalino Sul-Riograndense, highlighting the coevolution between "people and forests". The theoretical-methodological approach breaks with scientific neutrality, assuming an ethical-political stance aligned with Buen Vivir and Agroecology, which rises up against the colonial-capitalist model and "Monocultural Policy." Through lived experiences with family farmers in four agroecosystems, the micropolitical dynamics of territory creation were analyzed, emphasizing autonomy, reciprocity, and system complexity. The narratives reveal challenges such as labor scarcity, lack of public policies, and the tension between traditional knowledge and technological diffusion. They also highlight the power of agroecological networks in biocultural conservation. In this sense, the cartography advances towards forests and people as clues for imagining other agri-cultures, based on societynature integration and the collective construction of possible futures.