Representativeness and innovation in the management of the participatory processes: the case of the Brazilian organizations of family farmers

Abstract

Territorial development involves the organized participation of social actors in decisions regarding the use of the public - and, largely, private - resources of a region. Despite the obvious democratic virtues of the participatory processes, there has been a recent increase in the critical literature, questioning their results. This paper intends to reveal the tension experienced by the contemporary social movements: the conflict between representativeness and innovation. Representative movements tend to consolidate and strengthen interests, and their institutionalization pushes them towards routine attitudes that often block their innovative potential. One way out of the impasses of the social movements is in the terms of management of the social participation focused explicitly on learning and innovation. Organizations coming from social movements are an essential part of the participatory processes. This article, based on the example of the Brazilian policy of strengthening family agriculture, examines two of those organizations whose origin is in the social movements: the Federação dos Trabalhadores na Agricultura Familiar - FETRAF (Federation of Workers in Family Farming), which is a trade union; and the CRESOL System of cooperatives for credit outreach. Both organizations stimulate participatory processes and are associated with government policies. In the case of the trade union, however, social participation does not result in innovation, and the ties with the government tend to restrict the movement to relations already known. As regards the credit cooperative, social participation and ties with the government are the result of incentives that encourage the strengthening of what the new economic sociology calls weak ties, and thus open the way to expand the very foundations of the processes of local development.