The Socioenvironmental Dynamics of the Brazilian Sugarcane Agribusiness

In an Arts and Sciences conference held in St. Louis, United States, in 1906, Max Weber offered a remarkable interpretation of the expansion of modern capitalism in Germany’s countryside1. Establishing the historical characteristics of the different types of capitalism consolidated in the rural areas of East and West Germany, as well as their distinctions in relation to the North American experience, the author highlighted the variety of rationalities, the specificities of the German cases and, above all, the authoritarian nature of the capitalism established west of the Elbe in terms of the meaning of the actions of the elites of agrarian and social structures. In this Weberian interpretation, the best representation of this authoritarian capitalism in eastern Germany is the figure of the Prussian Junker. Unlike the enterprising North American farmer, the Junker was less interested in the technical rationality of land use, the organization of production, and the management of farming as a capitalisttype business than in maintaining his social position, his prestige through land ownership and control of the State’s actions, even interfering directly in the recruitment of the latter’s bureaucratic