LAND, WORK AND MONEY: DILEMMS AND TENSIONS OF THE PEASANT CONDITION IN THE SETTLEMENT SANTA HELENA

Abstract

In this paper we will discuss the phenomenon of the struggle for land as a way of life and a peasant condition in Brazil. It constitute itself as a social practice that generates educational processes that promote ways of being and acting in the world of the farmers, instituting individual and collective experiences conditioned by this reality. Our research focus turned to understanding the tensions experienced in the last years of this decade by organic farmers from the Santa Helena settlement, a Sustainable Development Project, implemented in 2005 in the city of São Carlos / SP. Through phenomenological analysis of the data collected in the field, we discussed aspects related to the forms of work generated in the settlement, the commercial and financial relations established by farmers in their daily lives and the way in which each other means the organic management of the land. We argue that such educational experiences are expressed and registred by the continued process of recreating social constraints that partly characterizes the reality of contemporary rural settlements.