Terras em embeddedness: uma economia política da terra “coletiva” entre famílias ribeirinhas do Lago do Carimum, em Oriximiná, Pará

Abstract

From the interface between the economy and what we call “nature”, or “natural resources”, we can think of the “land question” from the following points of view, which can be combined or not: the production aspect, for which the land and its resources serve as the basis, and the circulation and distribution aspects, for which the land itself can become the object. These aspects are encompassed by Karl Polanyi's notion of “substantive economy” (1957, p. 293), which refers to the essential “exchange with the natural and social environment” from which societies, in order to guarantee stability, to a greater or lesser degree, in the provision and satisfaction of their material needs , create institutions and forms of economic organization. The aim of this thesis is to investigate economic practices among ribeirinhas families from Lago do Carimum, in Oriximiná, northwest Pará, involving transactions involving land, a riverside category that refers to units (delimited areas) of family appropriation where places of residence and cultivation are settled. Practices such as taking land, inheriting, ceding, selling and buying, manifested in acts shrouded in moral expectations, and regarded as central by the social agents themselves in order to effect “social control” of occupations in the riverside territory, are described and analyzed. In conjunction, we seek to understand how these same families seek to legitimize - according to their own conceptions and in real situations of conflict with social and economic agents that they classify as outsiders - rights of access and exclusive use of forests and lakes, contiguous to the land, and which they claim as belonging to the community to which they belong. This research dialogues with the field of studies looking at so-called “common use lands” and the “collective management” of common use natural resources.