Family farming and institutional and non-institutional paths of political action in the Zona da Mata of Minas Gerais
family farming, social movements, public policies, political action
New forms of interaction between State and society woven through the creation of institutional spaces for social participation and a new set of public policies for family farming in Brazil have influenced the dynamics of social organizations of family farmers in recent years. This thesis presents an analysis of how these changes have influenced the political action of family farmers. Our main objective was to analyze the role of social organizations, unions, associations and cooperatives in the processes of implementing public policies for rural development, based on the questioning of political representation and the power relations and practices that are characteristic of these processes. The dynamics of the social organizations surveyed has as an important characteristic the performance in institutional spaces of social participation and in the implementation of public policies, mainly in the last twenty years. Although the process of constituting these organizations took place anchored in mobilizations around a set of demanding actions, with intense confrontation with local political agents and with the State, numerous dilemmas and conflicts regarding the dynamics between contestation and institutionalization emerged as soon as it began. a formal process of structuring and functioning of these organizations.