Territorialidades da economia popular solidária no (des) caminho do desenvolvimento local

Abstract

Experiences whose centrality is found in collective work, and in the reproduction of values and social principles for the development of communities, have gained prominence in debates surrounding economic denominations. In this context, alternative production forms, commercialization and consumption represent a transforming and differentiated condition, as is the case of agroecological practices in the popular solidarity economy (EPS). Therefore, it is seen that economic, political, socio-cultural, and environmental transformations are articulated in a territorial dynamic, where the transformed territory is a part that constitutes the changes of man, as an individual and a social being. In this perspective, it is understood that is necessary to raise applicable directions seeking paths for territorial, local, sustainable, and solidary development based on cooperation networks with articulations of power agents, which may represent alternative possibilities to the organizational system of nowadays society. In this context, by transformation agents, it is meant family farmers in agroecological transition who work in solidarity productive organizations (OPS); the Solidarity Economic Enterprises Incubation Center (CIEPS) of the Uberlândia Federal University (UFU); agroecological production consumers, who buy food and goods at the UFU Solidarity Fair; other transformation agents, such as agricultural technicians, the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) and the Popular Movement Center (CMP); and state agents. Through territorialities, represented by relationships and practices daily built, it is possible to open up possibilities, articulated by agents who experience EPS in agroecological practices. However, the concepts themselves – solidarity popular economy and agroecology – still denote paradigms under construction, although they reveal convergence and approximation perspectives. Understanding how the territorialities solidarity popular economy are configured and articulated by the subjects who experience them within scope of CIEPS/UFU, on the campi of Uberlândia and Monte Carmelo (State of Minas Gerais – MG), in order to promote a pathway for local territorial development is, therefore, the general objective of this thesis. As a spatial clipping, it was proposed to study EPS and its relationship with family farming in agroecological transition from CIEPS and its practices on UFU campi in Uberlândia and Monte Carmelo. In this regard, EPS is understood in a territorial context, in which social, cultural, political, economic, and environmental relations are the responsibility of human beings, in a collective construction process without exploiting others or environment. The research has a qualitative nature based, primarily, on the Collective Subject Discourse (DSC) method in order to represent the social reality of the subjects who daily experience the studied reality. As a central hypothesis, it was confirmed that the solidarity popular economy based on collective principles materialized in everyday life, when articulated with agroecological practices, reveal territorialities that can provide transformation in the direction of local territorial development. However, and with a critical stimulus, it is essential that there is occupation of public spaces and demand for effective public policy, which can be implemented and applied in practice. The CIEPS presence is essential for promoting actions that lead to the emancipation and the construction of new sociability. In this sense, the praxis for a real, concrete, and effective transformation must be evidenced. With everyone taking on the role of transformation agents, it is possible to reach a local territorial development, because there is a sedimentation for this direction.