PROTEÇÃO E PREDAÇÃO NO PROCESSO DE CERTIFICAÇÃO FLORESTAL DA CASTANHA-DO-BRASIL.

On the border between the states of Pará and Amapá lies one of the largest Brazilian nut massifs in the Amazon. In this region, nut gatherers have been engaged for decades in the extraction of nuts for consumption and/or commercialization. Since the 1990s, national and transnational companies have approached these populations with the intention of proposing business and establishing partnerships. This paper aims to present part of the process of forest certification of the nut woods of RDS Iratapuru, reflecting on its implications and effects. On the one hand, the certification enabled the extractive community to expand its business partners, among them the Brazilian cosmetic company Natura S/A. On the other hand, it required nut gatherers to make significant changes and adaptations. The ethnography was attentive to the disagreements within these agreements and sought to offer a reflection on the divergent understandings and on their stabilization processes, demonstrating that during the forest certification the knowledge of the nut gatherers is confronted to the knowledge of engineers, environmental technicians and forest management specialists. The paper argues that although the difference of assumptions that guide the considered knowledge is striking, it does not obstruct the capacity for communication and movement of both ways of knowing. In this sense, the anthropological literature on predation appears as an analogous way to understand the conflict of presuppositions and their possible arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]