Environmental legislation is often not being respected by small farmers. This work seeks to understand the reasons for this behavior through the analysis of social representations of nature and environment of the social group in question. As a result we found out that the social representations which configure the basis of the environmental legislation did not take into account the basic needs for the survival of family farmers. These needs can only be met through the use of areas considered of high value to preserve the natural environment. Allthough the farmers have included in their imagination the official view of nature reflected in the environmental legislation - forming hybrid social representations between modern and traditional world views - it is the materiality of their livelyhoods that explain the apparent contradictions in their actions. Thus, we consider the analysis of social representations an important tool to identify the underlying reasons that lead to violations of the law, which might indicate long-term environmental conflicts between these groups and the repressive state apparatus.
smallholders; environmental legislation; social representations; environmental conflicts