Drawing resistance: counter-hegemony and aesthetic expressions of the agro-ecological movement in Brazil

Abstract

This theoretical and empirical article contributes to the Organizational Studies by bringing to debate the social movements, especially the agro-ecological movement, which has been constituted as resistance to the hegemony of agribusiness in Brazil. In addition, the study provides a non-conventional theoretical and empirical “bridge” in this disciplinary field, including studies in aesthetics and neo-Gramscian discourse approach in Laclau and Mouffe. In this context, in the light of the concepts of aesthetics and neo-Gramscian discourse analysis on hegemony and antagonism, our goal was to investigate how the aesthetic expressions influence the construction of counter-hegemony in the Brazilian agro-ecological movement. The research adopts a qualitative methodological approach from the drawings analysis produced by men and women farmers in the Third National Meeting of Agro-ecology (III ENA), in the so-called Facilitation Panels Graphic. At the end, we concluded that the aesthetics contained in panels III ENA allowed farmers to re-design their world views, the disclosure of their concerns, realities and local agricultural alternatives, and especially the practical guidance, proposals and legitimacy of the movement that became central to the counter-hegemonic values and to build the common enemy. The complexity expressed in the relationships built in the panels also stressed that aesthetics can bring an effective, affordable and sensitive perspective in the construction of worldviews of subaltern groups. Thus, we emphasize that the Brazilian agro-ecological movement, also built through the aesthetic perspective, it is revealed as an important resistance to the hegemony of agribusiness and the capitalist model.