Seminar
Thainara Granero de Melo: Group identities in Brazilian agrarian reform areas
In the KTI group, socio-technical transitions are frequently analysed with the MLP (multi-level perspective) lens, which was originally proposed by Geels and Schot and has evolved partly as a result of criticisms on its use of agency, politics and power, and the simplified conceptualisation of levels. Central to the seminar is a recent paper by Oscar Svensson and Alexandra Nikoleris (2018) in Research Policy, which elaborates on this critical discussion with the MLP perspective, and emphasises its ontological foundations and methodological implications.
What can we say about the role of group identities in new areas, where people from different places start to live together and organize themselves through external intervention? In this seminar, I will present a paper in progress, which addresses this question by looking at the case of an agrarian reform area in Southeast Brazil, its cooperatives and related intervention programmes.
The theoretical framework developed combines psychological concepts of Social Identity Theory and the Institutional Bricolage approach. I intend to present the local context of this study; some preliminary results; and the challenges I have encountered to address the research problem.