Large companies and their global demands put pressure on the local way of life in a
process of commodification of nature and life, causing environmental damage and social
pressures, which leads to reflections on the role of local actors and institutions in the
processes of building social relations and changes in society. Understanding the
relationship of the actors in this arrangement involves looking at how governance takes
place and how the relationship between the large organizations, the State, and society
defines the "rules of the game", which may serve and privilege the interests of some and
restrain those of others. This research will analyze the construction of the corporate
discourse of sustainability and the governance relations established around soy in the
Lower Amazon region, identifying symbolic elements that contribute to the dissemination
of narratives and rationalities different from reality and local ways of life. The importance
of the study lies in understanding how capitalism and its historical transformations are
reflected in the Amazon and its populations. The theoretical bases of the thesis are based
on the contextualization of the debate on the emergence of the self-regulating market and
the consecration of neoliberalism and on the concepts of governance, development,
sustainability, territory and discourse. The geographical scope of the research is the region
of Baixo Amazonas in the State of Pará - Brazil, especially the municipalities of
Santarém, Belterra and Mojuí dos Campos and will analyze the performance of the
company Cargill. This is a study of an applied nature, with explanatory objectives,
transversal as to its scope of time, with a qualitative approach. The technical procedures
used were a bibliographic and field survey. The Institutional Analysis and Development
(IAD) Framework was adopted for the investigation of the governance structure,
emphasizing the description of the rules in the institutional analysis. The research also
used content analysis, with the support of NVIVO software, and discourse analysis to
understand the corporate narratives present in Cargill's annual reports and Instagram and
how they relate to what actually occurs in the territory. The thesis showed that the
instruments for disseminating corporate actions propagate narratives that contribute to
invisibilize and oppress local ways of life, besides not being compatible with the reality
that is presented in the territory in question. The actions of the State (in its different
spheres) point, in the majority of times, to capitalist interests, where governments have
presented themselves as a fomenter of the economic vision of the Amazon, creating public
policies that privilege the economic use of the territory, under the aegis of the term
development. The annual reports and Instagram preach a notion of sustainability linked
to the economic function and productive activities, serving the interests of the company.
On the other hand, for the communities sustainability is related to food security, to life,
to having food on their table and that of their neighbors. It has to do with ancestry,
identity, and the right to choose.
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