The embedded relationship between settling and evicting: an analysis of Capão das Antas' (São Carlos, SP) struggle to become an Agroecological Village

• Grant number: 23/04869-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree
• Start date: September 01, 2023
• End date: February 29, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Jorge Luiz Mattar Villela
• Grantee: Júlia Aricó Savarego
• Supervisor: Tobias Kelly
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Edinburgh, Scotland
• Associated to the scholarship: 22/04214-4 - The Capão das Antas Camp (São Carlos, SP) and the legal struggle to resist the eviction, BP.MS

Abstract

This Research Internship Abroad (BEPE) Project aims to conduct ethnographic reflection on the embedded relationship between settlement and eviction processes targeting Capão das Antas Camp - a rural occupation of struggle for Agrarian Reform (in São Carlos, São Paulo State, Brazil). The proposal is to analyze how Brazilian Environmental Law creates the assumptions in which the State can authorize the eviction of most of the residents of Capão. At the same time, the acampados also draw on expertise to fight against the eviction and enable the settlement of at least part of them in an Agroecological Village, strategically occupying not only the land but the inherently proprietary language of Law. I argue that there is an ongoing differentiation process conducted by the attorneys and the City Hall of São Carlos (owner of the land and the process claimant), as well as the people who live in the camp. The research will constitute an excerpt from my wider master's research, giving consistency to part of the discussions presented in my work over land rights and disputes throughout an exchange period at the University of Edinburgh, under the supervision of Full Professor Tobias Kelly (Co-Director of Research for the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh and an influential scholar in Legal Anthropology). In addition, Senior Lecturer Maya Mayblin, an active participant in the Centre for Contemporary Latin American Studies (CCLAS), will provide guidance for this project to be incorporated into the discussions and events of this research network that focuses on Latin America. (AU)