Hegemonies and Inequalities in Discourses about Risks on Production Models

There are a multitude of versions of what risk is, how it should be addressed, and who has the political, technical, and social capacity to deal with it. This heterogeneity of situations reflects, above all, the social conflicts and tensions that are the reflection of different frameworks of intelligibility regarding risks and policies for managing uncertainty.

Analyzing the risks generated in relation to the ways of producing in a region or a country from the perspective of the social construction of risk, requires taking into account the productive models, understanding them as decisions about which benefits are to be achieved and which are the acceptable costs for this. It considers the productive models as forms of production of subjectivities, where there is reproduction of power and mechanisms of domination and/or resistance. The risks that are defined in relation to these models and their definitions, suppose languages of assessment around nature and social equity.

The work is based on a cross-analysis of unique cases, which are presented as relevant considering the current geopolitical inequalities and distinctive features of the Latin American socio-productive matrix. They are instrumental cases, examples of how productive modernization is characterized today, with an orientation toward the development of countries, within their insertion in the regional and global economy.

Soy and cellulose, as productive activities, have had exponential growth in the last 20 years in Uruguay and the region, under state authorizations, foreign investments, changes in productive paradigms, which revolutionized not only technologically, but also socially and materially the environment where they were located, and the country in general. The research is based on the author's doctoral research, carried out from a comprehensive approach where she combines theoretical tools from functional anthropology, sociology of risk and cognitive psychology.