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——已经成为巴西最明显和最重要的政治问题之一。人们普遍认为，该国土地所有权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。新的社会行动者，如农村无地工人运动（MST）和农村工会，动员了成千上万失业的农村工人和无地农民，组织他们占领非生产性财产，并向政府施加压力，要求没收他们。1995年至2001年间，巴西政府征用了超过1800万公顷的土地，安置了大约200万人。该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）的机构民族志。在监督土地改革的司法、技术和行政方面，农改局的雇员处于一个不同寻常的地位，他们既要满足社会运动的需要，又要满足国家的需要，重新分配土地，促进新的土地改革住区的可持续发展。本研究项目采用多种尺度（国家、州、社区和家庭）的综合方法，包括：观察、半结构化访谈、参与式制图和媒体分析。本研究在巴西首都巴西利亚和东北部的伯南布哥州开展工作，通过将其民族志镜头聚焦于国家，分析土地所有权和管理的历史模式如何塑造政府话语、政策和实践的生产，为政治生态学的动态领域做出了贡献。在关注国家的过程中，本研究也为越来越多的关于治理和新自由主义的文献做出了贡献，通过将国家置于人与地方的关系中做出了理论贡献。最后，本项目对农业发展政治经济学的新文献做出了贡献，这些文献将当代农村转型置于更广泛的历史轨迹中。通过本研究收集的实证信息将有助于为巴西的土地改革政策和实践提供信息。关于土地改革的某些方面，特别是社会运动所起的作用，已经进行了大量的研究，但INCRA本身仍然是一个很大程度上看不见的参与者——被看到而不被理解。通过与INCRA员工、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，本研究将比以前更全面地了解国家在促进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，这一点在当前尤为重要。这项研究还将提供关于住区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.