Camponeses do Brasil : entre a troca mercantil e a reciprocidad

11/09/2009 - Article

A thorough analysis of the transformations that rural communities and farmer organisations have undergone in Brazil over the past few decades.

In Camponeses do Brasil , Eric Sabourin examines the transformations experienced by rural communities and farmer organisations in Brazil during the past few decades. The analysis is based on a wealth of experience of theoretical and practical research in different countries throughout the world (Bolivia, Peru, Black Africa, France, Oceania and Brazil). Using a sociological and anthropological approach, the author analyzes, revisits and updates questions that have marked the rural situation in Brazil in the 20th century. Of the new elements, let us make special reference to an analysis of family agriculture in relation to the issues of sustainable development, the evolution of relations of farmer reciprocity and the expansion of commercial relations in societies that are relatively un-monetised.

Using thorough and well-argued research, Eric Sabourin characterizes diverse intermediary situations between the polarisations of the social and economic logic of exchange and the logic of reciprocity. His conclusion is that the main contribution made by small-scale and family agriculture to the rural economy in Brazil is hidden by ideological discourses, the media, statistics and public policies, which render the mass of small farmers invisible in their own countries.

These policies, including some of those aimed at small-scale agriculture, are still largely geared to a family agriculture model, which is integrated in the market of exchange and functions according to the logic of a small capitalist entrepreneur.

The topical nature of the work Camponeses do Brasil also comes from the overlaps between the analysis of farming communities in their relation to the environment and the examination of recent instruments of social transfer policies, such as “Bolsa Familia”.The combination of these elements makes for a book that is essential to the discussion of public policies aimed at agriculture as well as to the updating of academic debates about the farmer question.

Camponeses do Brasil : entre a troca mercantil e a reciprocidad
Eric Sabourin
Coll. Terra Mater
Ed. Garamond Universitaria
2009