The fictitious reproduction of the twentieth-century São Paulo sugar cane agribusiness and the Marxist theories about the immanent and present crisis of capitalism: a critical exercise through concrete totality

• Grant number: 18/03104-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor
• Start date: August 20, 2018
• End date: June 30, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Geography - Human Geography
• Principal Investigator: Heinz Dieter Heidemann
• Grantee: Fábio Teixeira Pitta
• Supervisor: Manfred Nitsch
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
• Associated to the scholarship: 16/08587-9 - Sugarcane agroindustry fictitious reproduction in São Paulo, in the XXIst century, and Marxist theories on the immanent and recent capital crisis: an essay on concrete totality critique, BP.PD

Abstract

I present here my project for a place in the Research Stay Abroad Program. The project finds its reason in a more general research movement, already featured in my Post-Doctoral studies. I present a history of such movement, which regards a critique of capitalistic sociability understood as a concrete totality, precisely grounded on the critical comparison between the particularity of the sugar cane agribusiness sector and the theoretical formulations about the contemporary crisis of capital reproduction. This critical comparison of levels aims at better understanding the social reality studied as I propose a self-critique of my own formulations. I seek, thus, an insertion at Freie Universität Berlin, in the Latin American Studies Institute (LAI), for six months, with the supervision of prof. Manfred Nitsch, so as to share the results of my past and current research, as well as submitting them to the scrutiny of the scientific community as the main practical goals of such insertion. The participation in professor Nitsch's Weekly Seminar and in an interdisciplinary Research Group (inside LAI), geared towards the humanities, more specifically towards agrarian studies focusing on the recent movement of capital in the Brazilian and Latin American countryside, will also allow for the critical comparison of my research results with other researches of widely shared themes, which such groups bring together. It will also allow for making contact with recent researchers on the level of analysis that is lacking in mine own research, i.e., the production of specifically agricultural commodities on the meso level of analysis, in other words, the Brazilian up to the continental scale (Latin America). The critical comparison between the sectorial particularity of the São Paulo and Brazilian sugar cane agribusiness and such analysis level is justified as a research object for the investigation proposed in the course of the internship abroad, complementing my current formulations. The theoretical deepening gained with the critical theory group Exit! Berlin, by means of the exchange of research results (with participation in a weekly study group) also aims at tackling the developments of my formulations on the contemporary movement of financial/fictitious capital on a global level, in the relationship with the social critique proposed by the group. The gains obtained in the Research Stay Abroad Program should be incorporated into a yet-to-be-written essay, according to plan, as a result of the Post-Doctoral Studies. (AU)