“Constructing new resources: Cooperative, networks and blueberry production in an Argentine local area”

CRAVIOTTI, CLARA

Review of International Cooperation

International Cooperative Alliance

Lugar: Ginebra; Año: 2005 vol. 98 p. 8 - 31

A source of heterogeneity of Argentine agrarian structure over the last decade has been the incorporation of new agents to the production process, of non-agrarian and urban origins, which has taken place along with the expulsion of agents and persistence situations related to defensive strategies. This article examines the character of agents entering in counter seasonal production in a local area, reflecting about how their becoming so takes place almost in parallel with the formation of an association.   The concern for the topic leads to combine the analysis of the structural characteristics of the agents with an analysis of their interactions. The theoretical approach to what is known as “innovative milieu”, which highlights the role of local institutions and networks as mechanisms that help disseminate information and knowledge, is particularly relevant to the situation under consideration. This is so because new agents’ access to agricultural production has been made on the basis of a novel and very dynamic activity – the production of blueberry – within a process where the alliances that enable its existence are becoming larger. The analysis aims at understanding how the threads that conform the net of relationships among the agents and the different sectors of the community to which they belong are woven and also how such “weaving” of relationship nets is currently undergoing a re-definition process on account of the tensions arising out of the association project.