A construção social da qualidade na agroindústria familiar : o caso da indicação geográfica “Agreste de Pernambuco”

Abstract

The rural family agro-industry emerges as an alternative in the search for new market niches, using the greater diversity and differentiation of products through the transformation within the property. The construction of the quality of markets and the rules that govern them, even with compliance with legal norms, comes from within the process and with the collaboration of all the actors. Quality then has to be built and seen not only as a physical process, but also with social and cultural aspects and considering the personal effort in the making of the products, the dedication, the tradition and the artisanal "ways of doing" that bring the colonial special touch. In this context, the economic theory of conventions is part of the mutual and collective recognition of the broad quality of the product and was used to explain how the interactions between the producers of artisanal curd cheese and the other actors of the Agreste of Pernambuco work, which was demarcated and is in process of recognition of Geographical Indication. In order to fulfill the proposed objectives, the research method is exploratory with a qualitative emphasis. From materials collected by documentary surveys, individual interviews and observations, a corpus was designed to maximize the varieties of senses about curd cheese at different moments of qualitative construction. In this way, the analysis of the coordination of the actors in this process of obtaining the GI of curd cheese permeates domestic, inspired, opinionated, civic, industrial and mercantile motivations, representing values of order according to the theory of conventions. The results show that organized agents, with emphasis on institutions, make up a complex network of actors with the capacity to create a more sophisticated product, as they activate resources that are peculiar to them.