EPISTEMIC CAPTURE IN ACADEMIC AGROECOLOGY: ANALYTICAL MATRIX, SUBEMOTÉPÜBI AND VALIDATION OF INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE

Abstract

This study analyzed the epistemology of academic agroecology based on the hypothesis that the field, although it claims to be critical of the productivist paradigm and open to dialogue between different forms of knowledge, frequently recomposes modern regimes of scientific validation under new terminology. The objective was to understand whether the presence of indigenous, traditional, and territorial knowledge structurally alters the criteria for the legitimacy of knowledge or whether it remains subject to academic mediation. A qualitative, analytical-comparative, and interdisciplinary approach was used, applying the Epistemic Capture Matrix and the Epistemic Capture Index to a corpus of thirty academic studies selected from three information systems: Cadernos de Agroecologia, Scopus, and Google Scholar. The dimensions analyzed were Validation Regime, Indigenous or Traditional Presence, Predominant Epistemology, Epistemic Authority, Relationship with the Territory, Epistemic Capture, and Microrecognition, termed subemotépübi. The results indicated a global incidence of epistemic capture of 0.73, with the highest occurrence in Google Scholar, followed by Cadernos de Agroecologia and Scopus. The analysis demonstrated that academic agroecology does not constitute a homogeneous field of capture, but neither does it entirely break with the structural coloniality of validation criteria. In a large part of the corpus, indigenous and territorial knowledge appears as a reference or critical repertoire, without effectively reorganizing the centers of epistemological authority. It is concluded that the concept-method Ethnoagroecologize, grounded in the Territory-Entity derived from the experience with the Karão Jaguaribaras, offers a path of epistemological reorganization in the face of the latifundium of knowledge in academic agroecology.