The institutionalization of agroecology in Brazil: academic trajectories and discursive ties

Abstract

The fostering of agroecological productive activity in Brazil occurs through the joint work of a group of individuals, representatives of discourses and institutions, who constitute themselves as key actors for understanding the current dynamics of rural Brazil. In this article we analyze the institutionalization of the national agroecological field, focusing on the networks woven for its construction, its discourses of social transformation, actors and their implications in the construction of policies referred to it. The theoretical-methodological perspective is based on Bruno Latour's Actor-Network Theory (ANT (2012), and the field work consisted of conducting semi-structured interviews with a non ramdom sample of actors from that field and analyzing their trajectories. Among the main conclusions, we highlight that the agroecological productive activity in Brazil connects an informal and international system of transdisciplinary contacts that links academic research, teaching practice and extension activities, producing a movement to legitimize the field.

Key-words:
Agroecology; Actor-Network Theory; Science; Institutionalization; Brazil