Social Skills and Mobilization for the Rural Development in the territory of Santa Catarina Mountain Range

Abstract

This article aims to understand the social skills which have been used to promote the coordination and mobilization of agreements among the members of College of Territorial Development (Codeter) in Santa Catarina Mountain Range. Codeter is a joint body which promotes the planning and articulation for sustainable territorial development initiatives. For this article, we employed a case study strategy which combined the use of various data collecting qualitative theories in order to orient result interpretation. The social skills theory elaborated by Fligstein (2009) was employed in order to identify and understand the tactics that institutional entrepreneurs use to coordinate and mediate conflict between multiple social groups. As a result, we identified representatives of civil society and government organizations with institutional entrepreneur characteristics, which use various related tactics and skills, such as: directing discussions and agenda setting; conflict management; mobilization of participants; negotiation and persuasion, promoting credibility in the process. As conclusion, we understand that the objectives, identities and collective projects constructed in Codeter of of Santa Catarina Mountain Range were facilitated by the existence of institutional entrepreneurs endowed with social skills capable of encouraging agreements and political coalitions between distinct social groups in the territory.