Entrepreneurship and precarization in the Brazilian countryside

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to share the progress of my doctoral research, in which I study the articulations between the advance of financialization in the countryside and the root-taking of entrepreneurship ideology among precariat rural workers. The investigation seeks to advance the updating of rural studies, with a specific interest in the idea of social and political helplessness as a structuring axis of the connection between the ideological realm and everyday life.

Inspired by reflexive ethnography and Michael Burawoy’s extended case method, I aim to weave connections among the four dimensions of “extension” proposed by the author:  between participant and observer; of observations over time and space; between micro and macro scales; and between successive reconstructions of theory (Burawoy, 2009). The research in question includes six months of immersive experience in agroecology schools, assisting in writing educational materials, through which I intend to establish connections with students, teachers, and local residents to enable participant observation in the municipalities, as well as conducting semi-structured interviews with informal rural workers around the research theme.

I share the initial findings of the research, which are situated in the preparation for fieldwork and the refinement of the study’s sociological problem. I present the current state of the art across three fronts of study: the precarization of rural work; the financialization of the countryside; and studies on entrepreneurship. By articulating the accumulated research on these three fronts, I seek to situate my research problem and my questions to date.