Territorial plundering, precarization of work and degradation of the subject who works: the territorialization of the tree-cellulosic capital in contemporary Brazil

Author(s)

Guilherme Marini Perpetua

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Presidente Prudente. 2016-12-02.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp). Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia. Presidente Prudente
• Defense date: 2016-11-16
• Advisor: Antonio Thomaz Junior

Abstract

This study aimed to understand the recent territorialization process of pulp production associated to tree monoculture (eucalyptus) in Brazil, with emphasis on the implications for the safety and health of workers. To this end, the newest mega-enterprises of the segment in the country were analyzed, located in different regional areas (southernmost Bahia, West Maranhao and Northeast of Mato Grosso do Sul), which formed the empirical object of the research. In terms of methodology, the research sought to combine the use of quantitative procedures (survey and analysis of secondary data) to those of a qualitative nature (document analysis, field diary, semi-structured interviews), in order to consider the structural aspects while focusing on the role of concrete social subjects. The results obtained allow to make the case that, due to their inherent structural characteristics and current patterns, pulp production can only take place on the exact extent that it is able to appropriate and exert vertical and authoritarian control over contiguous territory and large extension, in order to enjoy the existing resources in a monopolist mode. Thus, the capital has made use of a deliberate and systematic strategy consisting of a set of tactics that, seen in the light of dialectical materialism, reveal the combination of different forms of accumulation (primitive by dispossession and expanded), forming what we called territorial plunder. In addition to the low generation of low-paid and unstable jobs to workers the result could not be other than a viscerally precarious and degrading, contradictory and even to a certain extent appropriate to market demands (international certifications) conforming internal health and safety policies of work of the large corporations of the segment. All this, in the analyzed period, was widely and generously provided in various forms (funding grant, tax incentives, infrastructure investments, easing of environmental legislation etc.) by the new development model based on a true conciliatory pact of classes and adopted by governments of the Workers' Party. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 13/04638-0 - Territorial plunder and labor degradation in the new spaces of pulp production in Brazil
• Grantee: Guilherme Marini Perpetua
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate