A força dos laços na dinamização do território : estudo das agroindústrias familiares na região do Codemau-RS.

Abstract

The construction of this thesis started from the reflections on the socioeconomic relations established in the commercialization between the owners of the family agroindustries, their suppliers, retailers and consumers present in CODEMAU territory. This is embedded in a historically rooted environment, forged by norms, rules, laws and social and consumer standards not always understandable to the owners of agroindustries. Facing the exogenous reflexes of a globalized market with few financial, technological and small scale production limits the insertion of these agroindustries into more competitive environments, thus leading many agroindustrializers to supply only the local market or even informality. Or, to increase its capacity of production and industrialization aiming at the expansion of the market through the search for commercial representatives belonging to other. In this sense, the scope of this work is based on the following research problem: How do the strong and weak ties present in the socioeconomic relations established between actors belonging to the family agroindustrial chain of CODEMAU condition and / or dynamize markets and territory? Therefore, the general objective of this study is to: Analyze how the strong and weak ties present in the socioeconomic relations established between actors belonging to the family agroindustrial chain of CODEMAU condition and / or dynamize the markets and the territory. In turn, the specific objectives consist of: To achieve this objective, we sought to: (a) Describe the socioeconomic, production and commercial profile of CODEMAU agroindustries; (b) To study the dynamics of CODEMAU family agroindustry commercialization networks from the identification of strong and weak ties; (c) To understand the networks of socioeconomic relations existing in these markets and their rooting in the territory; E (d) Analyze the importance and repercussion in the territory under the eyes of the actors and representative entities of the family agroindustries. To better understand this phenomenon, we used the theoretical contribution of the New Economic Sociology, embeddedness, networks of social relations, strong and weak ties, all with the main author Mark Granovetter. The study was conducted with ten AFs, ten suppliers, ten retailers and ten consumers as the sample. All the interviewees of the commercial relations network were indicating the pairs obeying the snowball method. In the second moment, to understand the imbrication of PAs in the territory, secondary data and interviews with representative actors of public and private entities were sought. The results demonstrated that: (a) Most of the commercial relations between the actors are established by 'weak ties', obeying the logic of trust, reciprocity, kinship and affectivity, but in seeking expansion they need to establish the logic of 'weak ties' with other actors representative of other partner networks, thus leveraging higher sales, greater scale and innovation. (b) AFs are a historical part of the territory, and the culture of agricultural production and industrialization came together with the settlers. That family agroindustries may not contribute exponentially to economic development, but it contributes to the social reproduction and maintenance of culture and man in rural areas.