This article proposes an anthropological theoretical contribution about the phenomenon of economic development and its contemporary expressions, integrating them to the tradition of social change. It brings the sociological debate about Brazilian development and dialogues with Development Anthropology subfield, focusing Oriental Amazon as an empirical frame that defies single scaled conceptions centered in privileged agents. Implantation of mineral extraction of iron in 1980’s and its exponential expansion in the 2000’s through “great projects” such as the PFC and the PFC S11D demonstrate the inductive capacity of structural transformation, but evidence, parallelly, its social nature, complex and multi-scaled. Thus, this article emphasizes the relations between agency, interaction and social structure, locating the progressive relevance of organization patterns of contestation in multi-agent networks with a transnational scope. The investigation relies on bibliographical research and literature reviews, as well as, secondarily, field research and direct observation.
Economic development; Social change; Great projects; Mining; Vale