<b>The global and the local: reforestation companies and the ‘cabocla’ community of postinho in the Curitiba metropolitan area, Paraná State</b> - DOI: 10.4025/actascihumansoc.v32i1.8035

Abstract

The aim of the present article is to analyze the process of change experienced by family farmers of the community of Postinho, located in the city of Tijucas do Sul, in the Curitiba Metropolitan Area (RMC), Paraná State, since the settlement of big reforestation companies (pine and eucalyptus) in the community surroundings. Such transformations were evidenced during the three stages of interdisciplinary research (interview with leaderships and institutions; directed interview with thirty-two families; open interview with seven families), performed during the elaboration of the thesis presented in 2006, at the Doctorate Course in Environment and Development at UFPR. Such evidences were the starting point for the analysis outlined in this article, which was built from a (re)interpretation of the process lived by the farmers of Postinho, from the view of sociology and botany. The challenge of the current article is to understand what a ‘cabocla’ community, based on a traditional way of life, faces with the pressures, limitations and opportunities that interfere in the possibilities of its permanence as a social format that maintains particularities and global characteristics in question. The inquietudes that move the researchers refer to understanding how the demands of the environmental field and of the globalized lumber market penetrate the traditional familiar farmers’ strategies and (re)signify aspects of tradition without substantially altering their situation of life (RAYNAUT et al., 2002), which puts at risk, in a certain way, their possibilities of social reproduction.