Ruralities in dispute: assetization of nature, digital governance, and the new frontiers of the agrarian question

Abstract

This article analyzes the mutations of the rural world and rurality in contemporary Brazil through the lens of land financialization and territorial tensions. It argues that the transfiguration of land into a financial asset (assetization) reconfigures the agrarian question, superimposing algorithmic governmentality and digital control infrastructures onto persistent forms of land violence and dispossession. Through a dialogue between classical and contemporary authors, the text investigates the dialectic between technological modernization and what is defined as the captivity of the land, confronting the rationality of agribusiness with the moral economy of vulnerable populations. It concludes that rural space remains the locus of a conservative modernization that challenges the limits of Brazilian sovereignty and democracy in the 21st century.