To Dwell, To Resist, To Re-exist: A Feminist Critique of the Metaphysics of Progress in the Brazilian Countryside

PAIM, Elisangela S.; FURTADO, Fabrina P. Furtado (Orgs.) Mulheres em defesa do território, corpo, terra, águas. Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Rosa Luxemburgo & Editora Funilaria, 2024.

Abstract

This review critically examines the book Women in Defense of Territory, Body, Land, and Water (PAIM; FURTADO, 2024), highlighting its epistemological, political, and methodological contributions to critical rural studies in the Brazilian context. The edited volume articulates empirical experiences of peasant, Indigenous, Quilombola, and riverine women with a structural critique of agribusiness, mining, the financialization of nature, and hegemonic development narratives. Through the transversal concept of “body–territory,” the chapters demonstrate how contemporary forms of dispossession operate simultaneously upon territories and women’s bodies, producing intersectional inequalities of gender, race, and class. The book engages with feminist political ecology, critical agrarian sociology, and decolonial perspectives, challenging the technical and ideological foundations of modernizing interventions in rural areas. Beyond denouncing socio-environmental violence, the volume presents practices of resistance and alternative socio-productive arrangements, emphasizing agroecology, traditional knowledge, and women’s community-based organization. The review underscores the relevance of the book for critical education and professional practice in Agronomy and related fields by proposing an expanded understanding of rural spaces as arenas of life, conflict, and re-existence. Finally, it points to limitations and possibilities for deeper theoretical engagement and for the institutionalization of popular knowledge within public policies and scientific production