Educação do Campo [Education for and by the countryside] as a political project in the context of the struggle for land in Brazil. Issue 1 (2nd January 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Barbosa, Lia Pinheiro
• Is Part Of: Journal of peasant studies. Volume 44:Issue 1(2017)
• Page Start: 118
• Page End: 143
• Publication Date: 2017-01-02
• Subjects: Educação do Campo -- MST -- social movements -- rural education -- Brazil -- PRONERA -- epistemology; Peasantry -- Periodicals; Sociology, Rural -- Periodicals; Rural development -- Periodicals; 305.563305
• DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2015.1119120
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0306-6150

Abstract

Abstract : Latin American and Brazilian rural social movements believe that significant social transformation requires the collective construction of a political project of an historical character. Education is conceived as an historical–cultural and political project to transform the peasantry into an historical subject through emancipatory educational–pedagogical praxis. The Landless Workers Movement (MST), the most emblematic peasant movement in Brazil, has played the leading role in this debate, which also includes many other peasant organizations. The MST has identified education as the key element in forging an historical–political actor out of the landless peasantry. This is articulated through the struggle for education for rural peoples, and along a theoretical–epistemic axis that revolves around the emergent concept of Educação do Campo ('Education for and by the Countryside'). I ask how the MST conceptualizes education, and what the role is of education in strengthening peasant resistance and sharpening the dispute between political projects for the countryside. I focus on the epistemic dimensions of the concepts of education and pedagogy in the trajectory of the MST in Brazil, and I examine Educação do Campo as an educational-political project and in terms of policy conquests in the political dispute between the rival political projects for the Brazilian countryside of peasants and capital.