Teoria da modernização, desenvolvimentismo e marginalidade na história da sociologia rural

Abstract

This article aims to reflect on the influence of modernization and development theory in hegemonic rural sociology until the decade of 70s. I will try to demonstrate how such logic of thinking and practice was crucial for the definition of the function and the object of rural sociology in its diffusionist phase. Function of predominantly technical character, where the one who explains confuses itself with the one who instrumentalizes, and definition of the object in terms of residual marginality –cultural and value delay – incoherent with the action standards of modern society. The advent of a new rural sociology come along with a real explicitation of the inherent contradictions of the instrumental interest of modernization theory, however, the same logical approach continues to permeate explanations and interventions related to agrarian question. It is because of this substantive persistence of the technicist character of development projects that the critique of developmentalism-marginalizing must remain as a central task of rural sociology.