Agro-narratives: Meanings and dissent of Democracy in the reasoning of the Ruralist Bench
Agribusiness; Ruralist Bench; Neoliberalism; Constitutionalism; Democracy.
The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate the meanings of democracy disputed by the actors of the Ruralist Bench in the Chamber of Deputies. These meanings were extracted from legislative projects proposed by members of the Parliamentary Agricultural Front (FPA) between the 55th (2015 to 2019) and 56th (2019 to 2023) legislatures. The aim was to answer the question: How do the meanings and values defended by the Ruralist Bench relate to a constitutional democratic project? The objective was to understand the characteristics of the democratic project that is defended in the legislative proposals authored by the Ruralist Bench, by identifying associations and overlaps between constitutional democratic meanings and neoliberal or neoconservative values. The actors in the group studied are commonly approached in human sciences research from an ethnographic perspective or in an attempt to draw up a socio-economic profile of parliamentarians; few studies are concerned with investigating the meanings hidden in the arguments they mobilize. The research gap found relates to the theoretical fit of these meanings and values in the description of neoliberal rationality made by authors such as Wendy Brown, Pierre Dardot, Christian Laval, David Harvey, and in Chantal Mouffe's understanding of antagonistic forms of doing politics. In order to achieve the proposed objective, the justifications and opinions of 65 bills were collected, as well as statements from two entities representing agribusiness interests (CNA and ABAG), which amounted to 135 documents submitted for analysis. The method adopted to interpret the data collected was content analysis, using the documentary analysis technique. Atlas-TI qualitative data analysis software was used to systematize the data and understand the associations made in the argumentative patterns identified.