A representação social do desenvolvimento rural sustentável construída por assentados: o caso do Projeto Unaí

Abstract

The most widely accepted concept of sustainability today suggests a systemic integration among the different levels of social life, that is, among the exploitation of natural resources, technological development, and social change. However, which player/agent should define the valuation and political parameters capable of guiding this integration? What is to be sustained? A common future of whom, for whom? The representations are social and so important in daily life, for they guide individuals in their way of jointly naming and defining the different aspects of everyday reality, in their way of interpreting these aspects, of making decisions, and at times taking a defensive stance towards them. A challenge facing Sustainable Development, Sustainability, and Sustainable Rural Development in Brazil is the dialogue between two representations: the first, that of Science and the State, built on rational, empirical and technical thinking, grounded on Formal Logic; the second, that of family farmers, built on common sense, on symbolic, mythological and magical knowledge, grounded on Natural Logic. Historically, Science and the State have considered folk knowledge, common sense, as a lesser kind of knowledge because it does not follow formal logic. With their scientific ethos and habitus, the Academia, the Scientific Institutions, and public policy makers value scientific knowledge as the only one capable of finding miraculous solutions to rural problems. They share the belief in the mythology of progress in which technological and economic achievements are the solution to all problems. Its origin lies in the paradigm of modernity where the economic is the space in which social harmony takes place and the market is the economic understanding of social and political life. The market, which has become a true system of representation that guides the action and vision of the social facts, disseminates the consumer culture. This belief in progress has also flourished in the countryside. The aim of this study is to identify the social representations of Sustainable Rural Development and Sustainability held by land reform settlers as well as some of the elements that influence or explain this representations, and to classify them according to the criteria and dimensions of sustainability under consideration. To this end, interviews were carried out in three settlements in the municipality of Unaí, MG. Based on Discourse Analysis, Social Representation and Modernization theories, the study found that in the settlers’ social representations of Rural Sustainable Development and Sustainability there is a valuing of the economic dimension over the others, indicating that these family farmers, due to the difficulties encountered and the insuccess of public policies, increasingly tend to believe and incorporate into their discourse the belief in technology, through the lens of modernity, as the main solution to their problems and as the only way of improving their lives. This reduction in the dimension of the meaning of Sustainable Rural Development and Sustainability in the settles’ view, if compared to the one currently used in public policies, reduces the possibility of these players participating in the design and operationalization of these policies.