Formative experiences, self-identifications and environmental conflicts in the southwest of Misiones (Argentina)

Abstract

In this article we analyze how the formative experiences on farm work are related with identifications and environmental conflicts in San Ignacio, Misiones (Argentina). Our aim is problematize how learning on rural tasks is related with self-identifications, considering social agrarian structure`s categories, and denominations derived from the intervention of state agencies. These processes take place in a context of land`s concentration devoted to forestry, where we observe some environmental turn of historical territorial conflicts.

Using data from an ethnography fieldwork that began in 2008, we present two families of rural people. In both cases we can observe how access to land is decisive in formative experiences about social reproduction activities, linked with identifications as “country people” and an incipient reference to “family farming” derived from State interventions. These two families show how experiences and identifications are expressed in the context of subject`s participation in social conflicts, which assume in one case the historical form of land claims while, in the other, we can see the environment as an emerging protagonist.