Research
Areas of Expertise
SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS AND DEVELOPMENT
This area of expertise is dedicated to examining the relationship between the processes of institutional development and socio-economic development in Brazilian society. Focuses on producing and generating organizations of knowledge and extension organizations, analyzing the conditions and consequences of technical progress and modernization. Critically assesses the plans, programs and rural development projects, including the colonization and land reform. Two research lines: “Governance of Common Resources and Sustainable Development” and “Communication and cooperative processes” are part of this area of expertise.
CULTURE, SOCIAL PROCESSES AND KNOWLEDGE
This area of expertise expresses the program’s vocation to consider the countryside as not exclusively agricultural. Thus, the identity and cultural expression are fundamental as a research field in rural extension. This rural vision turns to the relationship between rural and urban, mainly through the labor market, products, education services, health and access to social benefits.
Research Lines
It is understood by research line the area of research to which a researcher or research group is dedicated for a certain period of time, aiming to systematize their scientific practice. It is therefore a landmark guiding scientific researcher production or group of researchers and the institution to which they are linked.
The research lines of the program are characterized by: a) refer to a work area or field of knowledge whose domain is pursued by the researcher; b) refer to problematizations that the researcher makes about reality procedurally; c) be bound to professional and academic interests of the researcher, institutional interests and the scientific community, as well as the demands of broader social sectors; d) involve a search for systematization of knowledge of theoretical, methodological nature; and e) assume both the acquisition of knowledge as its review and dissemination.
Governance of common features and sustainable development
This research line has as empirical and theoretical research object the collective dilemmas that arise in contexts of common interdependence resources (forest reserves, common lands, water resources, irrigation projects, fisheries, etc., involving the relationship between the state and local groups and populations, policies, models and rural development experiences).
Its main objective is to investigate the conditions under which institutional arrangements, involving both state regulation as to the self-regulation by users, can solve such dilemmas, and focus on the forms of community participation during the evaluation process of environmental impacts of major projects; new forms of social organization of family farming; rural settlements, displacement and resettlement of populations affected by major projects; and other participatory processes involving reactions to public or private interventions of large-scale
Communication and cooperative processes
This research line aims to investigate the communicative and cooperative processes in extension and rural development in participatory contexts. The line approaches the problems of rural extension to the theme of social networks, the use of communicative practices in rural development actions, the set of issues involved in the cooperative and associative processes and inquiries produced by the relationship between communication, politics and democracy in complex and pluralistic contemporary societies. The approach proposed by the line drives the research of communication phenomena, interaction and emergency in social arrangements, with economic and / or non-profit objectives; communicative processes (in presence regimes, mediated technically, formal and informal) materialized in policies, practices and extension institutions; rationalities involved in decision making and livelihoods strategies; and forms of public experience of subjects with legal, economic, political and organizational spheres, which constitute the public space and social dynamics of rural areas.
Identities and collective representations
This research line aims to develop research related to knowledge and analysis of the process of formation and transformation of socio-cultural identities in rural contexts, taking into account the family structure, political and religious practices, role of community groups and actions, popular medicine, leisure activities, popular culture, art forms and rituals and relationships with the environment. Emphasizes the transformation processes of components that make up the rural identity, resulting from intercultural contacts and the globalization of culture. This research line also covers the study of the collective representations of identity and historical and discursive support of these representations. It aims to analyze the preservation processes and symbolic reinterpretation, memory and cultural heritage. One aspect to be emphasized is the study of cultural institutions and relations of dialogue and / or conflict between cultures and local and global institutions.
Construction of knowledge: local knowledge and science
This research line approaches studies dedicated to the investigation of differences, interactions and roundness between forms of scientific and local knowledge, as well as the forms of appropriation and transformation that this knowledge suffers because of social processes in progress, determined by institutional and organizational forms of production of science and technology. Policies on S & T (science and technology), disclosure and intellectual property become mechanisms for social order, not individual, building and institutional strengthening, revealing transepistemic production networks of science and technology in underdevelopment conditions.
