Banca de DEFESA: OTTO ARTHUR MATHEUS SANTOS DE SOUSA
Uma banca de DEFESA de MESTRADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.STUDENT : OTTO ARTHUR MATHEUS SANTOS DE SOUSA
DATE: 16/07/2024
TIME: 14:00
LOCAL: CPDA/UFRRJ sede (incluindo participação online)
TITLE:
Commodification: a multi-sited approach at bee-assisted pollination
KEY WORDS:
Keywords: Bees; Pollinator Crisis; Assisted Pollination; Plantationocene.
PAGES: 144
BIG AREA: Ciências Humanas
AREA: Sociologia
SUBÁREA: Outras Sociologias Específicas
SUMMARY:
Faced with the rapid environmental transformations associated with the Anthropocene, the decline of pollinators emerges as a warning sign about the ecological conditions of the present. With the biological simplification and standardization of landscapes, pollination has increasingly become an economic activity, that is, a service that must be organized and offered by humans and mediated by the market. In this process, bees are incorporated into market arrangements aimed at providing assisted pollination services. Hives are transported and installed in agricultural areas, sometimes traveling long distances, in order to meet the pollination demands linked, above all, to large corporate monocultures. Establishing assisted pollination as a mediating element in the relationship between bees, humans and the landscape, this dissertation aims to investigate the connections that are established between bees and humans in market arrangements that seek to instrumentalize the work of these insects in the pollination of agro-industrial crops. Inspired by the research proposed by Anna Tsing, we will look at assemblages in an expanded landscape of assisted pollination arrangements. This work seeks to connect three different levels of analysis: (i) the relationships between the ecological crisis and the decline of pollinators and how they have been interpreted, both by scientists and by other actors involved in the public debate; (ii) the structuring of a market for pollination services, originally in the United States and more recently in Brazil; (iii) assisted pollination practices present in agricultural landscapes formed by large apple monocultures, with apples being one of the main crops where assisted pollination is already a reality in Brazil. This was based on a literature review, analysis of documents, websites and online testimonials, semi-structured interviews with scientists linked to pollination biology and with the technical manager of an assisted pollination company that occupies a relevant position in the construction of the pollination market in Brazil. The methodology also involved participant observation and field interviews with technicians, extension workers and rural producers involved in apple growing in the municipalities of Vacaria (RS) and São Joaquim (SC). It was found that there are connections that make it possible for assisted pollination to emerge as a market, with ideas and practices circulating on different scales, involving a heterogeneous set of actors, forms of expertise and devices. The sometimes distinct logics, running in parallel, often overlap and influence each other in the construction of this market's arrangements. This argument is demonstrated mainly by analyzing the frictions established between the narratives for building this market, involving scientific discourses and business initiatives, the plantation imaginary and the ecological crisis. We highlight the fact that the radical economic orientation and objectification of bees, stripping them of their intrinsic value, make up a rationality that allows the work of bees to be instrumentalized. Linked to a symbolic transformation that reduces this insect to its service as a pollinator, the commodification of pollination takes shape in the assisted pollination systems analyzed.
COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
Interna - 1432841 - CLAUDIA JOB SCHMITT
Interno - 387237 - JOHN WILKINSON
Interna - 1551581 - THEREZA CRISTINA CARDOSO MENEZES
Externa à Instituição - ÉRICA ONZI PASTORI