SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS OF INDIGENOUS LANDS AND THE LEGITIMATION OF THE BRAZILIAN SUPREME FEDERAL COURT’S DECISION ON THE “TEMPORAL FRAMEWORK” (MARCO TEMPORAL) IN LIGHT OF MAX WEBER’S INTERPRETIVE SOCIOLOGY

Abstract

For the present paper examines the decision of the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court (Supremo Tribunal Federal – STF) in RE 1.017.365/SC, which struck down the so-called “time frame” thesis for the demarcation of indigenous lands, in the light of Max Weber’s comprehensive sociology, with particular emphasis on the notion of social representation. Drawing on the concept of social action and on the centrality of the “subjectively represented meaning” in social relations, the paper seeks to identify the different value ideas that shape the representations of indigenous land in the Court’s reasoning: at times as an economic asset and an object of legal certainty for private property, at others as an original territory and a constitutive dimension of indigenous cultural identity. It is argued that culture, understood as an arena of disputes among competing representations, offers the key to understanding the Court’s decision not merely as a technical-legal application of constitutional rules, but as a moment of selection and consecration of particular value ideas in the Brazilian constitutional order. Finally, the article discusses to what extent the decision contributes to the legitimation of legal-rational domination and to the reshaping of social representations of indigenous peoples and their territories.