Ontological disputes in the brazilian countryside

agrarian moralities, land archives, and conflicting regimes of knowledge

Abstract

This article analyzes the ontological disputes that shape the Brazilian rural world, situated in the collision between productivist rationalities, community moralities, and insurgent epistemologies. Based on a qualitative and critical approach, mobilizing documentary analysis and systematic literature review, it investigates how regimes of knowledge — legal, technical, moral, and cosmopolitical — dispute the definition of land, the legitimacy of subjects, and the possible futures of the countryside. The results show that agrarian modernization operates as a regime of truth that simplifies complex territorialities, delegitimizes traditional knowledges, and intensifies historical inequalities. In contrast, peasant, quilombola, and indigenous practices affirm relational ontologies based on reciprocity, care, and ancestry, challenging the hegemony of land-as-commodity and pointing to alternative horizons of territorial justice.