O imperativo masculino em assentamento do MST: uma relação de poder e dominação simbólica

Abstract

This research has the objective of identifying the development of gender inequality through the analysis of the power relations in MST (Movement of Landless Rural Workers) settlements and male social-cultural constitution of symbolic male domination, through the observation of the relation between the structure and action in the production and/or reproduction of the habitus inside the social field. To accomplish this, I worked with conceptual categories in the fields of relations of power, empowerment, patriarchy and symbolic domination. This way, I directed my research to some sectors that I considered to be capital in the establishment of the gender inequality in MST settlements, as the labor field of production, the relation between the public and the private, rights and opportunities, among others. This dissertation was methodologically developed relied on the search for the mediation between the two base dimensions of social dynamics: the social agent and the structure. Due to this fact, I relied my research on Bourdieu who considers the problems of epistemological methods to be a discussion that oscillates between two types of complementary and relational knowledge: objectivism (social and symbolic structure) and phenomenology (subjectivism). Respectively, whereas one builds the object relation that structure the social agent’s practices, the other falls upon the individual’s first experience. Bourdieu defines this type of epistemological approach as praxeological knowledge, i.e., a knowledge that seeks to break with the dichotomy between the social agent and the social structure, trying to articulate both dialectally. This way, the theory is combined to historic aspects as well as the data collected for a better comprehension of reality together with the issue of gender in MST setlements.