Indicação geográfica: a produção de cachaça de Paraty – BR e a elaboração de salame de Colônia Caroya – AR.

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to show that for a successful implementation of a Geographical Indication (GI) it is necessary for the actors to have a significant reserve of social capital. In order to obtain the Geographical Indication label, the project‟s actors need to strengthen interaction through civic participation and reinforcement of their institutions with a view to accomplishing the social initiatives. Obtaining the GI label can bring about positive results such as the fostering of the sustainable territorial development and the communities' life quality improvement. The Geographical Indications (GI's) is a quality recognition label for specific products and/or services, in the case of Brazilian legislation. It´s gained force in Europe as of the 18th century when specific regulations were created to recognize and protect products and regions. In the mid-twentieth century the GI's came to be used as a strategic tool and protection policy for european products. In Latin America the discussion on GI's is relatively recent. However, it has been gaining prominence, especially from the recognition of products embedding the appreciation of culture and tradition and being rooted in a territory, as the cases studied in this thesis, namely the cachaça from Paraty (a city in the south of Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil) and the salami from Colonia Caroya in Cordoba, Argentina. There are forty-nine GI registries in Brazil, while in Argentina there are only three cases for agri-food products (two for sausages and one for goat's meat in the Patagonia region). In Brazil, they are conceptualized as intellectual property institutes and are divided into Indication of Origin and Designation of Origin. In Argentina, they are divided into Geographical Indication and Designation of Origin, with regulations similar to the ones in the European Union. The sociocultural roots of products and the importance of networks building are essential aspects for understanding the GI's, as well as the social capital issue. The social capital formulation approximates to the networks theory whose main idea is that the actors' behavior is founded on the social relationships network that it establishes and/or maintains. The actors' behavior is another aspect discussed throughout the thesis, for in a context of products bearing GI labels there is a series of uncertainties such as the question of the adequacy of price charged and the quality. A methodological support was intended while approaching the Economic Sociology, including the Theory of Conventions and the discussion on Social Capital. The results obtained by means of the two case studies showed that the producers recognize that obtaining the GI label can foster the social initiatives and contribute to the appreciation of culture and tradition, although they did not signal how the GI label attainment could contribute to territorial development. The study also found that the prospects for GI adoption on the part of the producers is not limited to complying with rules, conforming to legislation and following the bureaucratic procedures, but that the starting point for protection moves towards the importance of quality and the use of GI as an appreciation instrument of products origin, culture and multifunctional agriculture.