Competitiveness and territorial rural development: actions and contradictions of federal planning for rural territories in Brazil

Author(s)

Alcides Manzoni Neto

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Geociências
• Defense date: 2017-05-31

Examining board members

Ricardo Castillo; María Mónica Arroyo; Ricardo Mendes Antas Junior; Adriana Maria Bernardes da Silva; Vanderlei Braga

• Advisor: Ricardo Castillo

Abstract

Since the 1988 Constitution has been enacted, it is possible to observe a valorization of territorial dimension in Brazil, in opposition to its classic sectorial guidance. Therefore, within the scope of a new public politics generation in Brazil, the National Program for Sustainable Rural Territories (PRONAT), launched in 2004, represents an advance in agrarian policy and in the instruments for promotion of rural development. Its operationalization and enhancement through more than ten years has brought important issues for the trends of territorial planning and also for rural development, at the same time it reveals the efforts of recent federal governments to create an institutional structure that gives support to a new way of combating poverty and inequality in the country side. Thus, we proposed to analyze PRONAT against the investigation of the assumptions involved in the development, demarcation, establishment and regulation of Rural Territories, considering that a rural area must be comprehended as a complex enclosure of geographic space. We evaluated to which extent those enclosures subsidized and still subsidize proposals of local development based on assumptions of geographic competitiveness, as well as we researched the implications of those enclosures for territorial planning in Brazil and for public policies elaboration targeted to national territory portions known as "rural". We analyzed different conceptions of competitiveness and territorial and regional competitiveness present in an international literature regarding the subject, aiming to precise this concept and investigate its importance for rural development. In parallel, we evaluated how the proposals connected to Local Development theory has influenced analysis and proposals of rural territories economic dynamics, focusing in an alleged need to implement local productive arrangements. In order to understand in which actions the competitiveness has ruled PRONAT assumptions, we investigated Territorial Planning for Sustainable Rural Development (PTDRS), to systematize our conclusions (AU)