Contribuições da agroecologia para a transição paradigmática: o caso da Caravana Agroecológica e Cultural do Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

The paradigm of modern science has been questioned since its inception, and more broadly and profoundly in this century. There are some proposals to rethink it as a whole, relying on several theoretical-practical essays on how to emerge a different paradigm. For that, we will have different ontologies, epistemologies and methodologies, we will enunciate them from multiple places. This allows the existence of multi-faceted looks, reframing the notions of neutrality, rationalism, dualism, reductionism, one-sidedness as the only way to build a truly scientific knowledge. One of these places of enunciation is agroecology, currently recognized as science, social movement, practice, way of life, utopia, government policy, profession, formal education modality, ideology. In order to discuss these different definitions and practices in agroecology, in an attempt to interact and multiply efforts, a perspective that is being used and strengthened by collectives and individuals is the networking and construction of gift networks. To leave the modern paradigm of science and arrive at another under construction, it is necessary to consider the process of transition. Understanding the political character of scientific activity, taking into account the indissociability between teaching, research and extension, agroecology uses a series of methodologies to build agroecological knowledge, seeking to foster dialogue between different knowledge that are equally incomplete. One of the methodologies used is the agroecological and cultural caravans, which has a series of horizontal communication tools such as artistic pedagogical installations, graphic facilitation, and collaborative communication. The sources used for its conception were, among others, the experiences of peasant-to-peasant methodologies, caravans of citizenship, and pilgrimages of the land. We notice the need to consider the psychological structures in the understanding of the interaction and the relationship of this with the structure of society and with the structure of history. Through the moments and spaces built by the “Comboio Agroecológico Sudeste” network, it was possible to see the relationships between the individual, the methodology, the epistemology in the construction of the paradigm of agroecology, and how the agroecological and cultural caravan contributes to the emergence of a new form of building knowledge. In order to deepen and to highlight the clues of this paradigm transition, it is necessary to understand i) whether and how we are moving from cartesian science to a systemic, complex, agroecological, post-normal, postmodern, and / or decolonial science; ii) whether and how we are moving from a state of automatic unconsciousness, which reproduces patterns, which does not assume commitments, to a state of individuation, a "Greater Being" committed to itself and to the collectives iii) how and if the network, through the Caravan of Rio de Janeiro, promoted the dialogue of knowledge in the construction of agroecological knowledge; is therefore to verify if and how we are polishing the lenses of seeing, feeling, thinking, intuiting and being in the world. Some categories emerged from the content analysis and collected interviews conducted to answer these questions. From the construction, realization and evaluation of the agroecological and cultural caravan of Rio de Janeiro, it was possible to verify the paradoxical and complex nature of reality, and the different understandings about what is supposedly a same event, process and a same methodology.