THE LONG MARCH OF THE PEASANTRY AND THE

Roberta Camila Alves Cavalcante; Denilson Dantas Gomes

Todos os Trabalhos

Trabalho

DOI

10.29327/9786527226680.1449593

Título do Trabalho

THE LONG MARCH OF THE PEASANTRY AND THE "NATURE-OBJECT": CONTRADICTIONS OF CAPITALIST DEVELOPMENT IN THE BRAZILIAN COUNTRYSIDE

Autores

Roberta Camila Alves Cavalcante
Denilson Dantas Gomes

Modalidade

IRSA - Congresso Mundial de Sociologia Rural (01/10/2025 a 20/01/2026)

Área temática

IRSA 38 - Commodity frontiers: actors, conflicts and territorial transformations

Data de Publicação

06/08/2026

País da Publicação

Brasil

Idioma da Publicação

pt-BR

Página do Trabalho

https://www.even3.com.br/anais/sober-irsa2026/1449593-the-long-march-of-the-peasantry-and-the-nature-object--contradictions-of-capitalist-development-in-the-brazili

ISBN

978-65-272-2668-0

Palavras-Chave

Peasantry, Land Concentration, Capitalism, Nature, Social Movements.

Resumo

The development of capitalism in the Brazilian countryside is an intrinsically unequal and contradictory process, marked by a heterogeneous expansion that articulates wage labor and peasant production. This article examines how the national agrarian structure has been shaped by a specific form of rentier capitalism, defined by the fusion between urban industrial capital and large landownership. Rather than following a classical path of agrarian modernization, this process transformed urban elites into major landholders operating under a dual logic: advanced labor relations prevail in industrial activities concentrated in the Center-South, while coercive and precarious relations persist on rural properties located in frontier regions such as the Amazon. Within this system, land is treated as a “special commodity,” functioning simultaneously as a store of value and as collateral for financial accumulation, thereby sustaining extensive unproductive latifundia. Although peasant holdings occupy only around 20% of total land area, they employ approximately 70% of the rural workforce, revealing a profound mismatch between land concentration and social productivity. This accumulation regime is legitimized by the modern conception of “nature-as-object,” which desacralizes the environment and reduces it to a pragmatic resource to be dominated and exploited. Such rationality underpins the advance of capital across rural territories, fragmenting space in the name of productivity and generating systematic expropriation, violence, and the erosion of non-capitalist social relations with the land. In this context, the Brazilian peasantry’s “long march,” exemplified by movements such as the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), emerges as both a refusal of proletarianization and a strategy to reclaim territory, time, and conditions of social reproduction lost through a long history of exclusion. The article concludes that agrarian reform remains an urgent political necessity. Far from residual, it is central to confronting Brazilian rural inequality, democratizing land access, and ensuring land fulfills its social function.

Título do Evento: 16th World Congress of Rural Sociology and 64th Congress of the Brazilian Society of Rural Economics, Management and Sociology
Cidade do Evento: Porto Alegre
Título dos Anais do Evento: Anais do 64º Congresso da SOBER e XVI Congresso Mundial de Sociologia Rural (IRSA)
Nome da Editora: Even3
Meio de Divulgação: Meio Digital
DOI

Como citar

CAVALCANTE, Roberta Camila Alves; GOMES, Denilson Dantas. THE LONG MARCH OF THE PEASANTRY AND THE "NATURE-OBJECT": CONTRADICTIONS OF CAPITALIST DEVELOPMENT IN THE BRAZILIAN COUNTRYSIDE.. In: Anais do 64º Congresso da SOBER e XVI Congresso Mundial de Sociologia Rural (IRSA). Anais...Porto Alegre(RS) UFRGS, 2026. Disponível em: https//www.even3.com.br/anais/sober-irsa2026/1449593-THE-LONG-MARCH-OF-THE-PEASANTRY-AND-THE-NATURE-OBJECT--CONTRADICTIONS-OF-CAPITALIST-DEVELOPMENT-IN-THE-BRAZILI. Acesso em: 25/09/2026