A territorial and scalar reading of the agroecological transition. Comparative study in the Paraíba Valley and North Coast, São Paulo
This research aims at to explain the heterogeneity of the agroecological transition trajectories evidenced in the Paraiba Valley and the North Coast of São Paulo. Specifically, the thesis seeks to explain the relationship between the trajectory of territorial development and the ways in which the transition is structured or how it encounters challenges that give it a diverse and heterogeneous character. The theoretical-conceptual effort performed in this thesis is far from the food regimes apparatus and from the bifurcated narratives of the (homogenizing) thesis of conventionalization, applied to studies on the potentialities and limits of the agroecological transition - concepts that are still dominant in national and international literature. To this end we articulate three theoretical approaches, namely: a) critical geography pollinated with the cross-scale discussion of political ecology; b) Flingstein's relational sociology and his conceptualization of social coalitions; and c) the territorial configurations of Favareto et al (2015), “derived from the reciprocal causation relationship that can only be understood when considering the movement of contradictions and articulations between agencies and the operating structures in the territory”. Thus, the agroecological transition is conceived as a result (possible) and relational between the individual agency of the social, economic and institutional actors and the structures that shape the margin of maneuver of these actors. Reflexive governance emerges as a concrete manifestation of this relational tension. This relationship is variable over time and space, resulting in couplings (scaling opportunities) and misalignments (scalar traps) between specific conditions in the territory and extraterritorial social, economic and political processes. These couplings and misalignments become explanatory categories of the emergence, and the strengthening or, conversely, of weakening and marginalization of the processes that ultimately define the sustain and reach of the agroecological transition in the territory. From the articulation of these three conceptual-analytical approaches we consider legitimate the comparative analysis of the agroecological transition in three municipalities - Cunha, São Luís do Paraitinga and Ubatuba - in the territory of Vale do Paraíba and the North Coast of São Paulo.