The relationship between work, cooperation and education in studies about the landless farmworkers movement

Abstract

This article is the fruit of an analysis of dissertations and theses about the Landless Farmworkers Movement (MST) found in Capes' thesis database, in particular those studies concerning the relationship between work, cooperative principies and education. We highlight the studies that evaluate the cooperative experience within the Movement, based on different concepts: those that understand that the problems of the cooperatives are related to the limitations of the members of the cooperative and or of the MST; those which understand a relationship between the success or failure of the cooperative and the political and technical training of the members; those which criticize an emphasis on the economic element of collective activities at the settlements, inspired by a business perspective of management and economic rationality; those which criticize limiting the application of cooperative principies to the cooperative itself; and finaLly those that analyze the limits of and possibilities for cooperatives in the capitalist mode of production, identifying the tensions betweenthe old and the new.