Transformations in a contested market: stability and upgrading of the steel industry in the eastern Amazon

Abstract

The work discusses the transformations and the search for successive moments of stability in the steel production market located in the eastern Amazon. The starting point for the analysis of a steel hub that emerged through enormous state resources and social expectations, entangled in the economic policies of military governments, is the remarkable transformations it has undergone in the last two decades. Relying on regulationist and strategic action fields approaches, it was observed how transformations escaped the specific decisions of companies, and were rooted in the effects of the actions of other types of actors located in nearby social fields: on the one hand, non-economic actors begin to carry out social criticism, denouncing environmental and labor irregularities in steel production, thus engendering an institutional crisis to be faced by companies; and, on the other hand, economic actors, who, in order to respond to social criticism and economic pressures, undertook innovations, by modifying either their productive organization or the rules that regulate relations in this market. These transformations led to the transformation of conceptions of control, which in different periods supported the institutional logic that guarantees market stability, allowing progress in the modalities of economic and social improvement (upgrading), given that there were companies that advanced in the value chain and social protest agendas were reduced.

Keywords
Eastern Amazon; steel industry; fields of strategic action; conception of control