THE ETHICS OF LABOR IN AGRIBUSINESS EXPANSION: transvaluation, depreciation and disciplining

Abstract

Taking the largest irrigation area in Latin America as an empirical reference, in this article I deal with the vicissitudes involved in rural work relationships in Brazilian agribusiness. Based on ethnography adressed to temporary migrant workers from several states in Northeast, I seek to analyze the interweaving between a) the transposition of peasant cultural traces to agribusiness, d) the moral expropriation of workers, and c) disciplining mechanisms. Such interlacing puts on the ground (and in mind) a kind of good worker ethics, which is problematized as a construct of a particular society, which makes agribusiness expand with its own contours and procedures, although heterogeneous.

Cultural encounter; Agribusiness; Development; Gaucho; Rural work