O setor sucroenergético enquanto um campo social: uma construção teórica e conceitual a partir da abordagem político-cultural

This article aims to build, theoretically and conceptually, a sociological review of the Brazilian’s sugarcane-sector, enhancing political and social elements as explicative variables to market dynamics. Starting from the contestation of the instrumental rationality existing in most neoclassical analysis, we propose a different approach of the sector as a social field, bringing in the contributions of the New Economic Sociology based on a political-cultural approach. According to a systematic analysis of the fundamental institutions, both formal and informal, that organizes and stabilizes social and economic relations within the sector, we concluded that the contemporary Brazilian sugar-cane field constitutes itself around big companies tied to international financial circuits. These circuits determines theirs dynamics in close relationship with policy domains, traditionally called to formalize and supervise the market’s rules. In doing so, the sugar-cane market hands over the stability and predictability required to economic actions of social actors.