Resumo

PIZARRO, Cynthia. The red pepper crisis: presuppositions, knowledges and powers in Santa Maria, Catamarca. Cuad. Fac. Humanid. Cienc. Soc., Univ. Nac. Jujuy [online]. 2000, n.13, pp.121-140. ISSN 1668-8104.

This paper focuses on the way in which some social subjects concerned with the red pepper production in the locality of Santa María, Catamarca, made sense of a conflict in the chain of production through their own presuppositions and knowledges. The aim is to analyze their explanations, through the identification of the presuppositions, the definition of the problem and its causes, and the possible solutions. The backing of this study is a corpus of semi-structured interviews which were done in the locality between 1992 and 1993. The diagnosis and prognosis of the crisis made by those subjects are compared, relating them to their underlying paradigmatic presuppositions. The significant differences found are not due to the kind of knowledges: scientific or common sense. On the contrary, they are related with the incidence, on both kind of knowledges, of different kind of paradigmatic presuppositions about the relation between theory and practice, knowledge and power. The definitions of the crisis are analyzed, then, considering the presuppositions about the what to know, what to know for and who to know for that characterize three different paradigms: the positivist, the interpretative and the critic ones. It is argued that the productivist and positivist presuppositions underlie the rural extension practices in the area. This factor constrains the possibilities of the small productors because their social situation of socio-structural inequality is not considered and, if it is, it is minimized from a reductionist point of view that stereotypes them us self-minded, stubborn and traditional.

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