Marajó Cheese as a technology in dispute: between local traditions and certification regimes

Abstract

This article analyzes Queijo do Marajó as a contested technology, marked by sociomaterial ambiguities that emerge at the intersection of contextualized knowledge, resource scarcity, and certification processes. Based on documentary and bibliographic research, as well as fieldwork conducted in February 2025 with producers, animal health defense agents, rural extension workers, and other public officials in the floodplains of the Marajó Archipelago (Pará, Brazil), the study investigates the tensions between artisanal practices and the standardization requirements associated with Geographical Indication (GI). The scarcity of buffalo milk—a central element in the production of this cheese—intensifies these tensions, revealing producers’ adaptive strategies and reconfigurations in production modes. Using the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) approach, the study highlights how different relevant social groups assign diverse meanings to the cheese, demonstrating interpretive flexibility and controversies surrounding authenticity and innovation. Instead of treating sanitary regulations, GI standards, or artisanal techniques as fixed and objective elements, SCOT allows us to understand them as contested social constructions, showing that technology—in this case, the ways of making and recognizing the cheese—is co-produced by social, cultural, economic, and material factors. Thus, the article contributes to understanding how territorial products are shaped by complex sociotechnical processes, configuring ambiguous spaces of innovation in the Amazonian context.