SOCIAL IDENTITY: UNIT AND SINGULARITY IN THE FIGHT FOR THE LAND IN BRAZIL

Abstract

The aim of this study is to analyse, based on the reading of several authors, some of the explanatory dimensions of the transformations that the life of the rural workers undergo when they enter the fight for land. Therefore, considering various aspects of the experience - aspects related to their origin and their life trajectories; the different types of resistance and pressure in camps and settlements; the understanding of the process that they have lived since the beginning of the experience; the progress and challenges in their staying on land; the internal mechanisms of the organization of the movement; and the participation of mediators and other social actors - it became possible to identify several different situations of that fight demonstrating the complexity of life inside those spaces. Considering those aspects it is therefore impossible to define these actors within the limits of unique and predetermined approaches. One is therefore able to recognize as from different perspectives a social identity (of settled farmer) in constant construction, transitory, full of conflicts and, because of that, subject to singularities in their own building.