Processo identitário da Rede de Sementes Agroecológicas Bionatur: a experiência na percepção dos agricultores

Abstract

The thesis analyzes the identity process that distinguishes and features a peculiar experience and pioneer in the production of vegetable seeds in agroecological systems, the seeds of Agroecology Network Bionatur, established 18 years ago by farmers settled in the southern region of RS. Through the analysis seeks to understand the process of social differentiation that runs through the evolutionary trajectory of embedded experience to the context of existing relations of production, their boundaries and perspectives. Identity is considered in a critical perspective is rejecting the essentialist and reifying usual treatments that seek to characterize the differences, naturalizing them. The identity process is analyzed from the perception of farmers turning to the experience itself, trying to understand it from the very logic that constitute the dynamic that defines and enables, and how the experience reinvents itself, and remains from the choices made in the midst of such an adverse context. It is designed to the identity process from the perception evolving five interrelated elements: (i) social actors, (ii) the general context, (iii) what is in dispute, (iii) standards values and dynamics coexistence, (iv) the daily praxis. There were held 21 individual interviews and semi-open 6 collective moments of debate. The results show that the identity manifests itself in close relationship with the context in the different elements considered, and the process of social differentiation travels the trajectory acting in determining the experience and making evident the power relations and the established borders. The norms, values and living practices are demonstrated as a stronghold of identity process, corresponding to the social practices developed and incorporated into daily life experience. As for the production system, it was found that the production of seed is perceived by integrating the remaining productive activities representing a way of life and in agriculture. The identity, then takes on a political character in the defense and affirmation of what it does and how it does.