Políticas públicas e território: uma discussão sobre os determinantes da expansão da soja no sul do Amazonas

Abstract

The thesis aims at understanding the dynamics of soy expansion in the Amazon State, in Brazil, by identifying and characterising the politico-institutional arrangement responsible for the socio-spatial transformations that promoted the reorganisation of the use of the territory and of its resources. The issue of soy expansion is approached by relating, opposing, and arguing that the interactions of politico-institutional arrangements between governments and their agencies, private actors, and civil society form a dispute field, in which the exchange of power resources, strategic alliances, and shared interests aim at influencing public policies to support the soy expansion movement in the Amazon State. Concomitantly, the global environmental problematic and the weight of Amazonia in the ecosystem balance contributed to strengthening the concept of sustainable development, which has been increasingly incorporated into the several spheres of companies, government, market, and civil society institutional and organisational structures, by creating spaces for dialogue, arenas for political dispute, new institutionalities, and public and private environmental management systems. These dynamics mostly contribute to the productive, social, and territorial restructuring of the Amazon State, as they enabled a connection of the selected territories to the spatial production circuits and to the cooperation circles at international level. It is concluded that the dynamics of (re)production of the agricultural spaces, which incorporated the natural fields of the South of the Amazon State into the globalised agricultural dynamics, happened in a subordinate and excluding way, by emphasizing social and regional inequalities, and by contributing to the promotion of negative externalities, such as land concentration and an increase in the deforestation rates. Key-words: public policies, soy, externalities, Amazon State.