The representation of family farmers in institutional spaces of social participation in southwest of Paraná - Brazil

Abstract

This study aims to present a research on the representation of family farmers process at institutional spaces of social participation. Data were obtained from City Council for Rural Development of Itapejara d’Oeste and Vitorino and Management Group of Southwest Territory of Paraná. These spaces, which are institutional spaces originated from the process of decentralization of state institutions and effort to develop civil society participation in state management, determine the emergence of a differentiated process of representation, played by representatives of different social groups present in these spaces. The representation is analysed considering two dimensions: the representatives representativeness and the representatives ability to intervene in the several spaces. The research shows that different configurations of spaces, trajectories of representatives and associative trajectories of municipalities and region alter the process of representation from the distinction of the profiles of the representatives, the forms of relationship between representatives and the represented and how their own institutional spaces of social participation are identified with the associative conformations of family farmers in the territory.