Turismo e parques eólicos no litoral norte potiguar: espaços de valorização do capital e do aprofundamento das vulnerabilidades

Abstract

In the course of the development of this thesis, a problematizing investigation of the territorial development process was carried out after the arrival of tourism and wind farms, understood as new global vectors of change, in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, northeast region of Brazil.From the literature review, it was observed the lack of studies that intersect these two vectors and that would further the reflection of their relations with the maintenance of vulnerabilities, preventing an effective development of territorial potentialities.Based on this finding, it was defined to investigate the interference and relevance of these global vectors of changes in the aggravation of existing vulnerabilities, particularly in the municipalities of São Miguel do Gostoso and Rio do Fogo, on the northern coast of the state, based on the assumption that these vectors intensify vulnerability, imposing new logics in the process of productive restructuring whose implications and explanatory nexos occur in a multiscale perspective. As far as methodology, the present study consisted of an interdisciplinary research, breaking with the disciplinary fragmentation of science, in an attempt to understand the whole, identifying itself, mainly, with qualitative methodology. Descriptive, interpretative, bibliographic and field research was carried out. The universe of field research was composed of a sample of the population. For its realization, it included: i) application of questionnaire (face-to-face and online); ii) conducting focus groups (face-to-face and online) and, iii) conducting semistructured interviews (face-to-face and online). The bibliographic research accessed several articles using the Knowledge Development Process - Constructivist (Proknow-C) tool. From the point of view of the research technique and analysis model, the triangulation of methods was used in the empirical stage, with emphasis on Content Analysis, percentage and interpretation. To assist in the visualization of information and data, figures, maps and graphs were used. From the initial researcher´s understanding, the elaboration of the theoretical framework, the analysis of the available official data and, the analysis of the empirical data collected in the field research, the observed results allowed the confirmation of the hypotheses.The development vectors (tourism and wind farms) serve the capitalist system and, therefore, reproduce the relations of capitalist production, fragmenting the places, appropriating the spaces in an unequal and combined way, through their selective use, generating more inequalities and deepening existing vulnerabilities, through the exclusion and expropriation of the original populations from their territories, in a particular way where both are hegemonized, especially as prescritors of economic growth, with consequences that expand a process of unequal economic and social development.It is affirmed that the development of a territory will become a reality, in the possibility-effectiveness relationship, when there is dynamic and creative interaction between the capacities of the local people, the opportunities of the surroundings and the resources available and that the effort and enthusiasm of the community have a potential to change the situation of vulnerabilities.Finally, recommendations are presented for a change of path in search of an effective territorial development, with potential for breaking the cycle of deepening vulnerabilities.