Los enfoques centrados en las prácticas de los productores familiares: Una discusión de perspectivas para la investigación en sociología rural

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to make a contribution to the discussion of some of the approaches for the research on one of the key actors of rural sociology, the family farmers. The frame of emergence of these perspectives is considered, as well as the methods and analytical dimensions they privilege. Their relative strengths, gaps and problems to be solved are also evaluated. The concept of "strategies of resistance" is proposed as an interesting insight for the study of family farmers' practices, because it allows accounting for the contradictory relationships they establish with the sociotechnical regime currently dominant in agricultural production as well as with the processes of transformation experienced by rural areas that are not strictly linked to the agrarian question. Certain precautions should be taken, however, so as not to reify the notion of strategy or to allocate a "resistance" logic to the whole set of practices deployed by these producers. © Wuhan University and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012.