Grounding the State: An Institutional Ethnography of Agrarian Reform in Brazil

在过去的15年里，土地改革问题--或土地所有权的公平分配--已成为巴西最明显和最重要的政治问题之一。人们普遍认为，该国在土地所有权方面的极端不平等是更广泛的社会和经济问题的组成部分，如发展不平衡、贫困、营养不良和暴力。新的社会行为者，如农村无地工人运动(MST)和农村工会，动员了数十万失业的农村工人和被征地的农民，组织他们占有非生产性财产，并向政府施压，要求他们被征用。1995至2001年间，巴西政府征用了1800多万公顷土地，安置了大约200万人。这项研究项目是巴西参与土地改革的最重要的政府机构之一--国家殖民和土地改革研究所(INCRA)的机构人种学。在监督土地改革的司法、技术和行政方面，INCRA的雇员占据着不同寻常的地位，他们与社会运动和国家的需要一起工作，重新分配土地，并在新的土地改革定居点促进可持续发展。本研究项目在多个尺度(国家、州、社区和家庭)采用了多种方法的组合，包括：观察法、半结构式访谈、参与式地图绘制和媒体分析。这项研究工作在巴西首都巴西利亚和东北部的伯南布哥州，通过将其民族志镜头聚焦于国家，分析历史上的土地所有权和管理模式如何塑造政府话语、政策和实践的生产，从而为政治生态的动态领域做出贡献。在关注国家的同时，这项研究也对日益增长的关于政府和新自由主义的文献做出了贡献，通过将国家植根于人与地方之间的关系，做出了理论贡献。最后，该项目有助于编写关于土地发展的政治经济学的新文献，将当代农村变革置于更广泛的历史轨迹中。通过这项研究收集的经验信息将有助于为巴西的土地改革政策和实践提供信息。已经对土地改革的某些方面进行了大量研究，特别是社会运动所起的作用，但INCRA本身在很大程度上仍然是一个看不见的角色--没有人理解。通过与INCRA雇员、土地改革定居者和社会运动合作，阐明政策、过程和结果之间的复杂关系，这项研究将比以前更全面地提供国家在推动土地改革方面的作用。鉴于现任巴西总统致力于通过土地分配实现社会变革，这一点在此时尤为重要。这项研究还将提供有关定居点日常生活质量的重要定性数据。

Over the past fifteen years, the issue of agrarian reform -- or the equitable distribution of land ownership -- has become one of the most visible and important political issues in Brazil. It is widely argued that the country's extreme inequality in land ownership is constitutive of broader social and economic problems, such as uneven development, poverty, malnutrition, and violence. New social actors such as the Movement of Rural Landless Workers (the MST) and the rural trade unions have mobilized hundreds of thousands of unemployed rural workers and landless farmers, organizing them to occupy unproductive properties and pressuring the government for their expropriation. Between 1995 and 2001, the Brazilian government expropriated over 18 million hectares of land and settled approximately two million people. This research project is an institutional ethnography of one of the most important government agencies involved in agrarian reform in Brazil, the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA). In overseeing the juridical, technical and administrative aspects of agrarian reform, INCRA employees occupy an unusual position, working with both the needs of social movements and the state to re-distribute land and foster sustainable development on the new land reform settlements. This research project employs a combination of methods at multiple scales (the national, the state, the community, and the household) including: observation, semi-structured interviews, participatory mapping, and media analysis. Working in Brasilia, the capital of Brazil, and in the northeastern state of Pernambuco, this research contributes to the dynamic field of political ecology by focusing its ethnographic lens on the state, analyzing the way in which historical patterns of land ownership and management shape the production of government discourse, policies, and practice. In focusing on the state, this study also contributes to the growing literature on governmentality and neo-liberalism, making a theoretical contribution by grounding the state in the relationship between people and place. Finally, this project contributes to the new literature on political economies of agrarian development that situates contemporary rural transformations within broader historical trajectories.The empirical information gathered through this research will help to inform agrarian reform policy and practice in Brazil. Considerable research has already been conducted on certain aspects of agrarian reform, particularly the role played by social movements, but INCRA itself remains a largely invisible actor -- seen without being understood. By working with INCRA employees, land reform settlers, and the social movements to illuminate the complicated relationship between policy, process, and outcome, this research will provide a more complete picture of the state's role in promoting agrarian reform than previously possible. This is particularly important at this time given the current Brazilian president's commitment to social change through land distribution. The research will also provide important qualitative data on the quality of everyday life in the settlements.