Trajetórias Tecnológicas como Objeto de Política de Conhecimento para a Amazônia: uma metodologia de delineamento

Abstract

The relationship between the knowledge adapted in the productive process and the current characteristics and future possibilities of agrarian development of Amazon has been deserving a rich reflection by important policy makers and advisers of the institutional field of Science & Technology in Brazil. It is more and more recognized, that to tackle in the region the great tensions resulting of the ecological crisis behind the global heating and climate change, it is necessary to subvert the production of S&T and the attitude of the State. It means, to revert the policy approach, of that current one, which considers the region as an “economy of open frontier” based on spurious productivity (Fajnzylber, 1988; Egler, 2006), for another that treats it as a “frontier of the natural capital” (Becker, 2004). Part of that would be the formation of a knowledge matrix able to connect consistently the tacit knowledge of the traditional populations with the codified knowledge of the S&T institutions (Sá, 2006). Part would be the integration between the universe of the production of goods and the one of the production of knowledge to guarantee the building up of competitive clusters of products and services based on the sustainable use of the natural resources (Vieira, 2006). Starting from the notions of “technological paradigms and trajectories” (Dosi, 2006) and of “competing technologies and path-dependent development” (Arthur, 1994), the article try to clear the difficulties of such revision. It argues first that between a society exploring a “economy of open frontier” and a society able to make true a “frontier of the natural capital” there exist the cognitive abyss created by the capitalist-industrialist reason and its relationship patterns with the nature, in the form of a paradigm of industrial modernization of the agriculture, powerful in many manners. It stresses further that also between institutions that generate and accumulate tacit knowledge and those which generate and accumulate codified knowledge there is the incongruity of their perspectives, from the deep distinction in subject’s and object’s perceptions, until the vision of purpose and direction. It points out, finally, that in the cluster and agglomerates reside deep asymmetries, where the paradigms and relationship patterns with the nature and the nature of the organizational paradigms consolidate practices and deeply distinctive attitudes – both of the subjects of the material production to each other and among those and the subjects of the formation and control of the knowledge. With results from factorial and main components statistic analysis applied to a special base of data of the Agricultural Census of 1995-1996 regionalized at micro-regional level, the article defines six technological trajectories for the Brazilian north region – the Amazon region. The differences among them were specified starting from the prevailing main characteristic of both structures and types of agents who control the establishments. They were further verified through the technological characteristics of the productive units expressed in the endowment of physical capital and in the relationships with the available natural resources. Besides the degrees with that they participated in the agricultural politics were approximated. Exposed the trajectories and their paradigms, their respective capacity of competition and dynamics demonstrated in the last ten years, the article discusses strategic options, indicating the need of objective institutional efforts to turn more consistent the foundations of the trajectories that could favor a development with larger hope of (social and environmental) sustainability.