Processos de cooperação em assentamentos rurais do Litoral Norte do estado de Alagoas

Abstract

This thesis presents a study of the forms of cooperation experienced by settlers in two rural settlements in the northern coast of the state of Alagoas. The work aimed to discuss the thematic cooperation in relation to the social capital, seeking to understand how the formation of rural settlements of land reform strengthen cooperation and consequently the capital among family farmers settled. Methodological guidelines contemplated qualitative techniques and instruments, making use of documentary research, bibliographic research, field observations with records in diary and semistructured interviews conducted with settlers, technicians and managers of organizations involved in the process of land reform. The results indicates that the formation of rural settlements, given the conditions and the process is fluid, has not contributed to the strengthening of cooperation, neither to increase the capital available among the social actors who experience social, economic and dynamic cultural. The experiences in the camps, marked by cooperation activities, were not enough to carry them to the settlements. The assumption of cooperation in the camp represented the chance of survival, given the past privations during the struggle for access to the lot, otherwise, since the settlers assume the condition of farmers, family farmers, land ownership is the possibility of live independently, free to decide their own future. The decision to cooperate is related to the life circumstances of the settlers, linked, as a rule, to the involvement in groups and social networks which stands the exercise of solidarity, as well as reciprocity, especially among components of extensive familys which includes, in addition to the components of the nuclear family, households and protected. Despite the guidelines of mediators (government experts, leaders of social movements and technical advisors), over time, towards the assumption of agricultural cooperation practices in rural settlements, there is a resistance motivated by negative experiences in the past, when rules and regulations (re) built between them weren’t observed, fact that generated conflicts and tensions, reducing confidence, compromising social networks, not allowing the social capital increase in the settlements. The agricultural cooperation exercises observed in both settlements are characterized as commercial business cooperation experiences. The formation of the two settlements did not contribute to strengthen cooperation or to increase the capital of settlers.