De práticas a capacidades: A atuação de procuradores do Ministério Público Federal no caso de Belo Monte1

Abstract

This research is based on an ethnographic analysis of the construction and transformation of state capacities within the Public Prosecutor’s Office (Ministério Público Federal – MPF) throughout the implementation of the Belo Monte dam. Since 2001, prosecutors have been promoting several actions – judicial and off the courts – that challenge the dam’s implementation model and try to reduce its social and environmental impacts. In this article, I investigate how three types of prosecutors’ practices – allies recruiting, internal collective articulations and bricolages – changed the way the organization deals with the implementation of large projects. I argue that these practices have produced an organizational learning which resulted in the construction and transformation of different types of capacities within the MPF, thus highlighting the dynamicity of state capacities and the importance of investigating what state agents are actually doing when they put these capacities in motion.