Search

Copyright of Lua Nova is the property of CEDEC and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Dados - Revista de Ciências Sociais is the property of DADOS and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Mana (01049313) is the property of Contra Capa Livraria and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article focuses on the conditions of the possibility of land occupations. To occupy lands and in them to mount camps, made in the last twenty years, the form appropriated is to claim the land reform in Brazil. The Brazilian state has been checking legitimacy to the claim of the movements, while expropriating the occupied farms and redistributing the lands between what they find in the camps. This type of occupation constitutes new fact in Brazilian history. Occurred in the period prior to 1964, like those of Rio Grande do Sul and of the state of Rio de Janeiro, they did not have the same characteristics and amplitude of what they were generalized in the last twenty years, nor they had become the adequate form to demand land dispossession. There were other ways of doing it, especially the mobilization for the change in the Constitution. With the military blow of 1964, it became impossible to promote occupations. The lands so obtained were returned to its owners and militant ones of the organizations of rural workers became target of the police and military repression.

This paper analyses the attempt to create an ‘imagined community’ among members of the MST (Movimento Dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, Movement of Rural Landless Workers ) as a way of maintaining high levels of participation. As one of the most active rural movements in Brazilian history, MST owes much of its success to high levels of involvement among members who have already achieved their initial goal of access to land. Movement leaders and activists encourage participation by creating a community through ideas and practices and distilled into symbols, slogans and ritual. The lived experiences of community differ from the imaginings, however, and in this paper I show how MST members negotiate the movement's expression of community in ways that reflect historical experiences of economy and society. Ultimately, MST's imagined community is effective because the movement has established itself as a successful mediator between the settlers and the Brazilian State. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]