2. Methods
This project’s research objects were the SEs that have generated community transformations in Bichinho, with particular focus on OdA. Research subjects were local social entrepreneurs, their former and current employees, and other village dwellers.
Fieldwork design combined ethnography and art-based research (ABR). Ethnography is a method originated from Anthropology that uses in-depth interviews and participant observation as data collection instruments [
14]. Ethnographic studies are affiliated with the interpretive paradigm [
15], adopting a qualitative approach [
16] and an inductive perspective [
17] towards fieldwork, which allows the emergence of unexpected emic cultural categories. In this case, we conducted data gathering and interpretation in a nuanced deductive–inductive way, with the P.L.A.C.E. framework [
10], guiding (but not restraining) our ethnographic observations and reflections.
ABR combines the tenets of the creative arts in research contexts [
18], employing artistic methods to gather, analyze, and/or present research data [
19]. It is a process-oriented methodological framework through which knowledge and meaning are built in a contextualized, interactive, reflexive, and co-created manner [
20]. By taking on artistic practice as part of the scientific study, ABR invites creative efforts not only from researchers but also from field participants, with communal art facilitating the expression of the phenomenon as it is lived by the individuals [
21], and communicating emotional aspects of social life [
18]. Because it creates connections among community, researchers, and audience, ABR has a transformative social and political influence on the individuals engaged in it [
18]. It gives voice to marginalized subjects, it deepens researchers’ interpretations, and it welcomes audiences’ inputs.
In order to understand discourses, behaviors, and values, we have conducted 16 in-depth interviews and engaged in several ethnographic informal interactions [
17] with actors involved in the production and consumption of goods and services offered by the SEs under study (see
Table 1). The in-depth interview protocol was designed with the objective of understanding participants’ experiences with OdA’s and Bichinho’s social aspects [
17], and was guided by two questions suggested by Malinowski [
14]: what participants say about what they do (discourses) and what they feel about what they do (values). To answer Malinowski’s third question—what respondents actually do (practices)—participant observation has been carried out in loco in order to apprehend behaviors and to bridge the gap between practices and representations.
For the first eleven interviews, conducted in March and April 2019 by this article’s first author and by Dr. John Schouten (who is also a member of the research team), interview protocol focused on oral histories [
22] and comprised questions about the participant’s experiences with OdA and with Bichinho. In March 2020, the second author joined the team, visited Bichinho, and suggested the ABR approach to data collection and interpretation. After that, two projective exercises [
23] based on the autodriving technique [
24] were added to the semi structured interview script, which was then applied to five more respondents, all former OdA artists.
In autodriving [
24], visual stimuli previously created by respondents are discussed during qualitative interviews. These stimuli can be photographs, video footage, a personal diary, or, in this case, self-portraying sculptures made by the respondents upon researchers’ request. Projective responses can also be elicited by stimuli that were not produced by the respondents, such as photographs published in traditional or social media [
25], movie trailers [
26], videos created by researchers specifically for the interview [
26,
27], or, in this case, a coffee-table book. By encouraging participants to talk about what is portrayed in visual stimuli, and not directly about themselves, the objectives of projective techniques are to facilitate the discussion of sensitive topics; to penetrate beyond respondents’ level of awareness; to circumvent barriers when there is difficulty to admit incapacities, weaknesses, addictions, fears, or prejudices; and to obtain data in greater quantity and depth if respondents have poor memory, little knowledge of themselves, little propensity for self-disclosure, little verbal articulation, or great shyness [
23].
With those underlying premises, the first projective exercise invited participants to comment on a highly illustrated coffee-table book about OdA, published years before [
28], which contained several employees’ quotes and photographs. During in-depth interviews, we invited participants to take their time browsing the book, and then inquired about their memories regarding its production phase, when the information and images in the book had been collected. We also asked respondents to describe what was depicted in their most favorite and least favorite photographs in the book. The objective was to tap into feelings and emotions from past and present moments, without confronting participants with direct questions about how they felt.
For the second projective exercise and as part of the ABR approach, we commissioned from six former OdA’s employees a tridimensional self-portrait. These specific artists were suggested by Toti, who worried about their lack of income during the pandemic of 2020, since they were no longer in OdA’s payroll. The artists received half of the agreed payment upfront, and the remaining sum upon delivery of the sculpture two months later, when they would be interviewed by the first author. Five of them finished the assignment and one dropped out, no longer responding when contacted. The sculpture was used during the interview as a trigger for identity discussion, working as a third party onto which respondents could project their views and meanings about OdA, about Bichinho, and about themselves.
As a trial-and-error process that mirrors what Arsel [
17] (p. 940) has called “the iterative research circle”, the ABR aspects of this project are still ongoing and will, if all goes well, bring about new insights after the present article has been published. We will invite more artists to create tridimensional self-portraits in hope their artwork will precipitate deeper identity discussions during future interviews, and we will exhibit an installation made up of all the self-portraits as a later part of this project, in order to open gaps for discussion [
29], instead of zeroing in on specific scientific answers [
21] to our research questions, which is one of the beauties of ABR.
Field data gathered so far have been analyzed in four steps: transcription of interviews, cross-sectional thematic analysis, descriptive analysis, and interpretive analysis [
30], with the ultimate goal of generating theory, in addition to offering a thick description [
15] of the phenomenon.
Cross-sectional thematic analysis consists of coding participants’ discourses, through the detection of recurring themes, either in light of analytical categories previously found in literature, or in an unexpected fashion, with the emergence of native categories. This means that the themes identified as relevant were chosen both a priori, due to pre-existing theories and frameworks, and a posteriori, due to the inductive approach to fieldwork. This interpretation stage generated semi-raw textual data, transversally organized by analytical categories and native categories, and no longer interview by interview [
30]. The codification and reorganization of data went from an “approach focused on the coherence of each individual (...) to a transversal approach focused on thematic coherence” [
30] (p. 123).
Once the cross-sectional thematic analysis was completed, the descriptive analysis began. In addition to the data collected via in-depth interviews, at this stage, the data from observation sessions, that is, photographs, videos, and field notes, were also examined and described. Alami et al. [
30] (p. 123) emphasize that “a description is not a simple enunciation of elements one after the other”. For these authors, it is important to identify and understand the connections between elements, revealing underlying social structures. Therefore, this interpretation stage was responsible for originating thick descriptions [
15].
After the completion of the descriptive analysis, the interpretive analysis began, which sought to strongly articulate the categories and descriptions elaborated in the previous steps with the theoretical toolkit adopted for this study, aiming at inferences, conclusions, and new theoretical proposals.
3. Results
OdA is located in a beautiful acreage on Bichinho’s main street. It is one of the first constructions one will see when coming from Tiradentes through the 7 km scenic and bumpy road that links the two towns. Tiradentes is the 7000 inhabitant touristic town where most visitors lodge when coming to Bichinho. On the left-hand side of the road, one will find OdA’s shop, a large rustic house currently painted in pink, with green doors and windows. On the side of the house, a dirt path surrounded by vegetation leads to Toti’s acreage, where a showroom, a few studio sheds, and living and communal quarters are located, all very rustically built. Toti used to live in the acreage, but now resides in a gated community in Tiradentes. One current and one former employee, Celia and Marcello, occupy two of the houses in the acreage. They have both worked at OdA for decades, with Celia referring to Toti as “papi”, to which he jokingly replies “I have no old kid like you”.
Toti runs OdA with his sister, Sonia Vitaliano, who is in charge of broader management and financial activities, based in their OdA store in São Paulo, where the family is originally from. For many years before coming to Bichinho, Toti owned an antique store in the vicinity of São Paulo, with a significant network of providers and buyers. He used to visit Tiradentes and Bichinho, sourcing items to sell at his store. When he decided to flee the big city, his initial plan, as he told us during his interview, was to start an arts and crafts traveling workshop. He tried it out in a beach town near São Paulo, before finally deciding to move to Minas Gerais:
I wanted to stay three years in each town. To teach, and to leave towards the South of Brazil. But in beach cities, they’re not in need of arts and crafts. And there are no raw materials. Here, there were raw materials and people willing to work. (…) We would scavenge in the woods. (…) This was a project with no funds. (…) We never had any [financial] support by the municipality or the government. (…) We gathered things lying around. Wood, old tins, old glass, fabric.
(Toti, social entrepreneur at OdA)
OdA started, therefore, as a workshop in the month of August, hence its brand name. Toti’s traveling plans changed, as he settled in Bichinho, with a stationary school at first, followed by the shop initiative. This is how he described his teaching objectives:
Our project has to do with income generation. You don’t just teach them a technique. You teach them how to make a product that is sellable. They must be able to make money. There’s no use in teaching them papier-mâché so that they will all sculpt the same little doll.
(Toti, social entrepreneur at OdA)
Work at OdA is a collective effort that starts out of Toti’s imagination. The first input for a piece always comes from him. Different people will work on different production phases of the same piece: preparing the reclaimed material, sanding, welding, painting, finishing it, and finally selling. The execution process welcomes participants’ creativity, but Toti always supervises the end product. A former employee who already had an art background when hired by Toti in the 1990s retold how it all works: “Toti would tell me his thoughts for a new piece and I would draw them down for the team. And everything that is produced is done by the hands of several people”. Another former employee stressed the freedom inherent to the process and its social outcomes: “Toti gives a lot of freedom to his employees. We would get paid to learn. Toti values the human being. You would evolve. You would be able to buy something better for your kids”. However, another former employee implied feeling deprived of her authorship in the creative process:
[At OdA], we did not sign our name on the pieces. That is, they did not belong to us. They belonged to OdA. (…) Not even the larger pieces. We were not allowed [to sign]. (…) Once someone commissioned a very large ostrich from OdA. So Toti bought the base made of wood, and D. and I sculpted it. The head. The parts. The feet. And then, this guy who only gave the wax finishing decided to sign it. I went… “Nah, I’m not letting this pass. That is just too much. You did not make it. You just coated it with wax. And the piece is yours?” Toti made him remove his signature.
(Former employee at OdA)
We were able to observe a few recurring themes underlying OdA’s artwork: the “ex-voto” (a votive offering to a saint, usually in return for a cure or miracle, which may be a painting depicting the miracle or a wax model of a healed body part.); the baroque arts and architecture style from Minas Gerais, which is central to Brazilian colonialism; ancient and Catholic liturgies; archetypical events, such as the Flood; fantastic chimeras and wings; the circus and ballerinas; robots; syncretism and miscegenation; the sea; tropicalism with its fauna, flora and fruits; social and environmental causes; and the juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane. A former employee explained the extent to which new themes impacted social life and culture in Bichinho:
Toti liked to add sex to the small sculptures [that go on a larger piece]. “Draw a little line here, to show it’s a girl. Put breasts on her. For the boys, draw a small wiener to the side.” People in Bichinho were very simple-minded, rustic people living in the middle of nowhere. So, for them, that was absurd. But they got used to all of it, to the whole sexuality business. I think this broadened horizons for people who had always been so belittled. So they started drawing breasts, willies, minnies. And that stopped being a stigma. So it was a taboo breaker.
(Former employee at OdA)
When the same former employee mentioned human diversity as an important part of Toti’s imagery, we immediately thought of one of OdA’s pieces seen in their store in São Paulo, which depicted Syrian refugees being welcomed by the Brazilian population. The informant added: “And a demonstration of respect. Respect for the human being. Because we are all different. We are born with differences. So Toti asked ‘draw a bald one, put hair on the other one, put a beard on this one’.”
Artists at OdA work with reforested or reclaimed wood, metal, pigments, crystals, and found and repurposed objects. Society’s waste is welcome there and regarded with good will. Piles of raw materials clutter different parts of the acreage where the studio sheds are located. “There’s an ecological conscience to everything that is made”, a former employee observed. “All products are based in recycling, in repurposing. At Oficina de Agosto, a small piece of metal becomes a leaf for a flower bouquet. So, there’s respect for the environment. We encouraged people to plant their own gardens. Plants produce oxygen, and also because of the aesthetics”.
OdA has seen more abundant times, having now 21 employees in its payroll, a number that used to be much larger in the late 1990s and early 2000s, as Toti described: “There used to be 60 to 70 people working here. It was a good time to sell in Brazil”. One of OdA’s earliest employees, who went on to open his own business, recounts what he would see from his studio window at lunchtime:
It was impressive, at 11 o’clock, mid-day, we used to see around 60 people passing by to have lunch in their homes. Because [there were too many employees and Toti] could no longer cook lunch for all of them. So, everybody would go home for lunch. We used to see 60 people leaving Oficina de Agosto [at lunchtime]. You don’t see that anymore.
(Former employee at OdA)
After the world economic crisis of 2008, OdA’s large-scale sales and high prices started to decline. OdA lost many of its organizational customers, such as two of our research participants, who used to own a home decor store in Miami and bought from OdA by the bulk. In 2008, they closed their store, lost the mortgage to their home, and moved back to Brazil. Their destination: Bichinho. They opened up a bar right across the street from OdA’s shop because, as frequent customers, they knew there was nothing to drink nearby and OdA’s upscale clients could be interested not only in quenching their thirst but also in sipping a few premium vodka cocktails while taking a break from shopping. Their account goes like this:
We started [our bar] in Bichinho in March 2010. (…) We came back from the US after living there for 22 years. (…) We came back after the crisis. We knew the area in Bichinho way before. We had a store for five, six years. We used to come to Brazil and buy stuff. We bought from Oficina a lot. (…) The trucks would come there and stop. And fill it up. Oficina was our main supplier. (…) It was the time of the recycled, the organic, so it was a boom in the US. We had five stores. (…) The reason we came back was that, all of a sudden, the US crashed. (…) We decided to go back [to Brazil] but São Paulo, where we’re from, was out of question. So, we visited Oficina and there was a place to rent right across the street. We always thought it was (…) something that people needed there, some place to have a drink, to have coffee. (…) You had to go all the way to Angela’s just to have a Coke. (…) There was this small place to rent. [We asked] how much is it [per month]? And it was something like 50 bucks, so cheap. Because Bichinho was nothing. Nine years ago, not so long ago. (…) Toti changed that place. People would go to Bichinho just for OdA.
(Former entrepreneur in Bichinho)
This is just one tiny example of the many businesses that were born and benefited from OdA’s presence in Bichinho. At the time of Toti’s interview in 2019, OdA had one single organizational client left, also a home decor store in Miami, which was paying for the majority of OdA’s costs. But Toti was optimistic and felt that things were getting better.
We now turn our attention to the P.L.A.C.E. framework [
10] in an effort to organize a thick description of the phenomena found in Bichinho. We then proceed to compare OdA’s case to other SEs and to suggest ways of overcoming the social/capital paradox denounced by Barbosa [
3].
3.1. P Is for “Promoting Community Champions”
The first principle for community development described by the P.L.A.C.E. model is “promoting community champions”. A community champion can be defined as “an established and trusted community member with a good track record and a (confirmed) entrepreneurial interest, acting as the community access point (…) for the facilitation of services and products into—and out of—the under-serviced community” [
31]. New champions should be identified and supported by more experienced champions and by the community itself [
32]. This might hint at a possible solution for Bichinho’s current conundrums.
For the past thirty years, Toti has definitely been one of the most active and recognized community champions in Bichinho. During observation sessions at OdA’s acreage, in one of the sheds that house a multitude of scattered materials waiting to be repurposed, a small framed drawing hanging on a distressed pilar caught the first author’s eye. It was a drawing of a man with black hair, on top of which read “Toti, the patron saint of Bichinho”. Upon inquiring about the drawing, the first author was informed that it had been made and gifted to Toti by a friend. Curiously, Toti decided to, in a nonchalant and perhaps modest fashion, hang it in a shed, among piles of unfinished or scavenged stuff, instead of displaying it in his home. In its littleness and simplicity, the drawing carried a powerful message that confirmed and projected Toti’s community champion status, lifting him to a place of holiness.
The mixture of the sacred and the profane is a recurrent underlying logic in OdA’s works that mirrors Brazilian religious syncretism, an early (and still current) form of resistance to and accommodation of Catholic colonialism by indigenous and African people, who had their own beliefs and spiritualities, apart from Portugal’s impositions. In Bichinho in particular, Barbosa [
3] found that Catholicism was accommodated by lay organizations, made up mainly of women, giving rise to traditions, rituals, festivities, and gatherings around the church of Nossa Senhora da Penha de França, with motivations that were not strictly religious.
One of our informants emphasized how art championed by Toti was capable of renewing this community:
People used to grow fruits and vegetables and barter them. They would only buy the essentials. And with art, other opportunities came along. People improved their houses. Their entire quality of living improved. And all that was provided by Toti. Not just in Bichinho. All the other towns around benefited from it too.
(Former employee at OdA)
From a macro perspective, Toti’s arrival and practices gave rise to a new economy in Bichinho. From a micro perspective, Toti, as a community champion, helped the individuals that came in contact with him, from paying for their health treatments to literally driving them to their doctor’s appointment. One former employee remembered: “Toti would build bathrooms at peoples’ homes. He taught people how to brush their teeth. He would pay for their food”. Another former employee recalls:
One of the first things Toti did was to send people to the dentist so that they could smile. So that they could be themselves. This is fundamental. To raise people’s self-esteem so that they can work happily, so that they can burst into laughter. And work gets much more fun like this.
(Former employee at OdA)
Toti is known for hiring people living with vulnerabilities. A friend of Toti’s told us that, when OdA first started, Alcoholic Anonymous meetings were places where Toti would go to recruit local workforce: “Once, Toti said to me: ‘let’s go to AA meetings because we’ll probably find people there who will want to work with us’”. During his interview, Toti praised his best employee: “My best employee came from APAE [an association for people with cognitive impairments]. Him and his mother. He’s very shy, difficult to talk to. But he’s one of the best that ever worked here”.
LGBTQ+ people are also welcome and very present at OdA. One of our research participants, a lesbian woman, told us how meeting Toti made her feel safe from the dangers of being a homosexual in the town where she used to live:
My family’s reaction to my homosexuality was very serious. They asked me to leave the house. I was 16 years old. So [meeting Toti] changed everything, (…) always helping his friends, always putting us (…) in a position of respect. (…) So, with Toti, we had our gang. We no longer needed to go to the ghetto. Because when that happens, when your family abandons you, you go to the ghetto. And then you are exposed to everything. Drugs, prostitution, theft, dealing, everything. In São João Del Rei there are a lot of ghettoes. (…) I could be dead by now. I would not have survived in São João Del Rei. I could have died in an accident, or from drinking. (…) I’ve had my beverage laced without my knowledge [for example]. Because I was so young, I didn’t know anything. And Toti is concerned about everyone having a home. So [he encouraged us]: “build your own house”. I’m not just talking about financial aid. I’m also talking about ideas. Because he also has an entrepreneurial spirit, in addition to his artistic side.
(Furniture designer and occasional OdA’s collaborator)
She was not the only participant who revealed that Toti helped her dodge death. Expressions of gratitude permeated our respondents’ accounts. A former employee who used to work as a truck driver before OdA and currently thinks of Toti “as a brother” testified: “I’m most proud of having won over alcoholism. Work [at OdA] took me off alcoholism. What Toti gave me is much larger than money. I believe I would be dead a long time ago if it weren’t for Toti. I haven’t had a drop for 25 years”.
As for other community champions, from our interviews and from Barbosa’s work [
3], we understood that feelings towards religious and governmental leaders in Bichinho are ambivalent, as we will discuss next. In our respondents’ discourses and during observation, we identified other entrepreneurs as community champions, especially Angela, who owns the busiest restaurant in the village. Long-established and new-coming distillery entrepreneurs might also be seen as community champions, but not without controversy.
Barbosa [
3] collected data that conveyed feelings of estrangement and irritability towards the town’s priest, even from research participants with a Catholic lifestyle and high religious involvement, who perceived him as an outsider and perhaps authoritative manager of the sacred. Some informants resented what they understood as a contradiction between a sacred sphere, associated with love and charity, and an economic sphere, materialized in the fees charged by the priest to perform masses or speeches at funerals, for example, reproducing, as Barbosa [
3] puts it, exploitative power relations between the colonizer and the colonized. The author stresses that this phenomenon is not of fully-fledged antagonism or resistance to the Church as an institution or, in our case, to its mediator as a community champion. Her informants acknowledged the importance of a religious leader, as long as he fits into certain dynamics that do not promote subalternity. They recalled a previous town priest who “spoke like locals speak” and was therefore widely appreciated, but who, in their minds, was relocated to a distant parish precisely because he used to encourage Bichinho’s residents to get organized and demand fairer prices for religious services.
Regarding governmental leaders, our research participants expressed a sense of skepticism. Bichinho is one of the many districts of a municipality called Prados. A previous mayor of Prados was born in Bichinho. However, we were told that he has not done much for his place of birth, either socially, economically, or environmentally. One of our informants concluded: “no politician has ever done for Bichinho what Toti has done”. Another interviewee explained it in more detail:
A big problem we have now is that (…) we don’t have laws that protect… that say what is allowed, and what isn’t allowed. (…) People do everything wrong. For example, [formally] these are rural lands. So, there shouldn’t be lots to rent [commercially]. Therefore, you can’t have legal papers. So, everything that is done is done informally. Light is a workaround. Water is a workaround. Everyone builds what they want. (…) In rural areas, you don’t have great supervisory power. Because nobody wants to inspect. Everyone is blood-related. So “Am I going to inspect [my relative]?” (…) And look, we managed to have a mayor here [born in Bichinho], who had worked [at Oficina de Agosto]. He couldn’t do much about it. He did something, pavement, but not much.
(Entrepreneur in Bichinho)
When we interviewed Angela, who lends her name to her restaurant, Tempero da Angela, we were told to meet her at the town’s church in a weekday morning. She had spent hours there cleaning the church, a chore she performs regularly. Angela started her restaurant in 2003, focusing on OdA’s clients who could not find a place to have lunch in town. Today, Tempero da Angela attracts many tourists that usually line up outside its doors, patiently waiting to be seated. She offers typical dishes from Minas Gerais, in a self-service operation, with people scooping red beans, pork meat, and poultry with okra, to name just a few, directly from large rustic pots that sit on two wood-burning stoves. Angela works in the kitchen every day and will gladly fry eggs for the customers who approach the kitchen door and ask her to do it, sunny side up. Outside the window, we see the vegetable garden and orchard from which much of the greens served in the restaurant come. Angela was able to send her children to college with the success of the enterprise she had started in the back of her house, like many other businesses in Bichinho. Her concern with education spreads to her employees and she likes to help them go back to school:
My daughter was Bichinho’s first university student. After her, came many others. (…) There is a boy who worked with me. He went to college to study biotechnology, I think. It didn’t work out very well. Then he studied odontology and is now working in Campinas. (…) It will take many years for him to pay us back [the student loan she gave him]. Besides the [moral] support. (…) Studying is fundamental. I always encourage kids to study. (…) There is this guy who teaches guitar to the kids, I’ve been sponsoring him for seven years. We try to do these initiatives to get the kids off the streets.
(Angela, entrepreneur in Bichinho)
Angela’s story is not the focus of the present article, but it is important to unveil her potential as a community champion. She also told us about a community effort to clean the village in the 2000s, which included local entrepreneurs and residents:
The English couple [who lived in Bichinho] helped a lot. The people from Cachaça Tabaroa, who are not [originally] from here but were already here. Toti and Celso. Rodrigo from the Automobile Museum. First, we started a movement because there was no garbage collection here. So, the street was full of scattered garbage, the back yards, everything. So, we started holding meetings to inspect what was being done right, what was wrong… And our first initiative was to deal with the garbage. We promoted a week of garbage pick-up. Everyone adhered. Each person was asked to clean their yard. And the companies that were already in Bichinho, with few workers, were responsible for cleaning the streets and vacant lots. We paid for a truck to take it all away. I don’t remember how many truck pick-ups there were, but I believe more than twenty trucks of garbage were collected. (…) Then we looked at the problem of basic sanitation. We even went far. But then the project ended, it didn’t work out. It was quite frustrating for us. Because we managed to get a biodigester to collect sewage. But then the City Hall didn’t follow through. But the garbage issue was something we managed to solve, right? Today you walk around town and you don’t see any garbage. We managed to raise awareness, on the streets, at school, at home. There’s one or two that still litter, yes, but it’s hardly anyone. Nobody throws waste in the water streams anymore. There’s always someone watching, someone who puts up a little sign.
(Angela, entrepreneur in Bichinho)
However, as we have been told, sewage still goes into the water streams, since the biodigester project was abandoned:
There’s an old social center in Bichinho, like an NGO. (…) If someone shows up, wanting to manage the business diligently, it’s possible to achieve a lot. For example, the sewer here. It would be very easy to at least collect the sewage. But it doesn’t happen. The sewage is all thrown into the river. (…) With so many people coming to live here, it seems that they created a rule that, to be president [at the social center], you cannot be an outsider.
(Entrepreneur in Bichinho)
As the previous quotes imply, promoting community champions is a task that, in Bichinho, has required the management of tensions between outsiders and insiders, as we shall discuss in the next section. The community efforts described by these informants also show how social initiatives usually require an interactive network of players, usually formed not only of individual town dwellers, but also of social enterprises, governmental and non-governmental organizations, and even traditional businesses.
Bichinho is home to at least three distilleries that produce the typical Brazilian sugarcane aquavit named cachaça: Cachaça Velho Ferreira, Cachaça Tabaroa, and Cachaça Mazuma, the latter being a relatively new initiative from a retired businessman that decided to move to Bichinho a few years ago. A visitor at the Mazuma headquarters can take a tour through the sugarcane crops, the zero-waste gravity operated production facilities, the wood-barrel aging cellar, and the shop. Despite aiming at sustainable, environmentally conscious operations, Mazuma is not regarded with good will by some locals, who see its entrepreneur as an outsider that has already been fined for inadequate use of the land. As one of our informants put it: “I have lived here for twenty years, but I am still considered an outsider”. These distilleries’ stories are also not the focus of the present report, but their owners, despite current controversies, may display the potential to act as community champions. One of these entrepreneurs manifested concern about the lack of dialogue between commercial and governmental actors in Bichinho:
I fear a lot for the future of Bichinho. Because we don’t talk about working together, about choosing the target audience together. This business of allowing anyone to show up and open any sort of commercial activity… (…) I think it’s too risky. (…) I think there should be a partnership between the public and the private sectors to try to protect these things. But I don’t see any sign of this happening. (…) And the University here could do a community project. We could make a partnership. To protect the ruins from the colonial period. To identify the trees, for example, perhaps we will discover a lot of things. And then, with the support of the University, which is a federal agency, we might be able to talk to other agencies that may protect Bichinho. No need to take away someone’s land. [Show them that] ‘you can make money out of this. So, stop destroying it.’ These initiatives are missing. But with this crisis…
(Entrepreneur in Bichinho)
While we acknowledge that Toti’s role as a community champion is undisputable, we found no evidence that this social entrepreneur or that his social enterprise may have been identifying and promoting more champions, other than the training of instructors to travel and teach arts and crafts outside Bichinho, as described by Toti himself: “We train teachers to go to other cities and do workshops. They already get there with a [commercial] project [in mind]. Teachers from OdA have visited around 50 to 60 towns”. Despite being an initiative to promote champions, they do not work locally, and their championing stays restricted to income generation through folk art, not spreading to other community needs.
Therefore, thinking of community champions as a fundamental principle for community development, our managerial recommendation would be that the same efforts Toti has shown to transform his apprentices into autonomous artisans with their own studios be applied in the promotion of other community champions among OdA’s current and former employees. As we have discussed, power relations are critical in the identification and action of these agents. Community champions in Bichinho must not reproduce a hierarchical structure that subalternates locals. Long-established and new-coming entrepreneurs with a social and environmental conscience may formally unite for a common good based on place, organizing meetings and actions that include residents (not as targets but as project cocreators) and all types of businesses (not as competitors but as partners that will all benefit from a stronger community).
The tensions that emerge from the encounter between insiders and outsiders are not irreconcilable. These paradoxes might, on the contrary, produce opportunities, if carefully managed, as we shall discuss next.
3.2. L Is for “Linking Insiders and Outsiders”
Place-based SEs can greatly benefit from the contact between outsiders and insiders. Knowledgeable insiders (such as local volunteers, municipal government representatives, business owners, and other town dwellers) help outsiders (such as visiting artists, industry experts, media, and academics) understand cultural nuances of place [
33]. Outsiders may bring new skills and new ways of looking that help insiders shift perceptions about a place they might be just too used to [
34]. Literature and practice in different cultures have shown, however, that this is not an easy encounter [
35].
OdA’s and Toti’s biographies in Bichinho form a rich illustration of how linking insiders and outsiders might work as a second fundamental principle for community development. Toti was an outsider who arrived with a purpose of working collectively with Bichinho’s insiders, and that is one of the main reasons for his enterprise’s success. He went on to being a catalyst for matching more outsiders with insiders, as he connected his former customers from São Paulo with Bichinho’s arts and crafts producers. Our own incursion as researchers, and others’ that came before us, are also evidence of Toti’s power to connect outsiders with Bichinho’s insiders.
When Toti arrived in Bichinho, besides crocheted crafts made by women, there were other local artisans practicing a limited conceptual and aesthetical repertoire. Sculptures usually depicted animals, especially the lion, following a tradition created by local families Andrade and Julião. Furniture design copied classic French and Portuguese styles. Toti sparked new design ideas inspired by local rural motifs that celebrated native characteristics of the place and, at the same time, were valued by his former customers in São Paulo. For example, instead of the traditional wooden lion, many of OdA’s pieces portray guinea fowls, which are very common in Bichinho. A furniture designer and occasional OdA’s collaborator explained how Toti did it:
He exalted, in art, the place’s identity. (…) Before, we kept copying João VI chairs, Louis XV chairs, Marie Antoinette cabinets… [The design style was] always very imperial, colonial. (…) He branded that little flower that the artisan had already been making and which had no value. (…) He transformed handicraft throughout Brazil. All furniture and objects made of iron and wood nowadays [in Minas Gerais], they all came from Toti and Celso.
(Furniture designer and occasional OdA’s collaborator)
She was referring to the large furniture and handicraft industry present in many cities in Minas Gerais, especially those around Bichinho, such as Tiradentes, São João Del Rei, and Santa Cruz de Minas.
Toti has also promoted the exchange between outside artists and his local apprentices: “I used to invite renowned artists from São Paulo to come stay here. They would stay for a few weeks, they would also teach the kids. To have something different for the kids. So, the guest house here is precisely for that”.
Although there may be a general resistance to outsiders in Bichinho, the town has shown that an outsider that truly empathizes with the insider is embraced by the community. In one of our interviews, we learned that:
Toti has no prejudice. If an ex-alcoholic relapses, Toti prefers that they come in to work. Toti asks ‘you’re not going to cut your finger on the saw, are you? If you’re ok to work, so come in’. He prefers the person nearby. He takes care of everyone. He doesn’t forsake anyone. If someone has a problem with the law, they turn to Toti. And everyone wants to protect Toti in return. They are even a bit overprotective of him.
(Furniture designer and occasional OdA’s collaborator)
So, although there may be resistance to outsiders, if they do not reproduce a hierarchical power structure that subalternates locals, the chance for a true two-way exchange increases.
One possible suggestion to force the encounter between outsiders and insiders, triggering tensions and, therefore, opportunities, could be to house, at OdA or at other local institutions, artistic residency programs, with mid- to long-term stays, such as the ones promoted by the Haudenschild Garage [
36], the InSite Foundation [
37], the IDEAS XLab [
38], and so many other privately funded initiatives.
3.3. A Is for “Assessing Local Capacities”
Like mentioned before, Toti helped broaden the artistic repertoire in Bichinho by directing artisans’ attention to the natural beauty of the place. Local resources can be of environmental, physical, intellectual, social, or institutional natures [
39,
40]. A third principle for community development would be to identify and foster these previously taken-for-granted capacities.
As Barbosa [
3] thoroughly describes, OdA found fruitful ground in Bichinho, was capable of building on local capacities and needs, and benefited from a larger project that embraced folk art as one of the country’s cultural assets, during a time of overall financial prosperity. Women in Bichinho already knew how to knit, and men had construction abilities learnt from their work in larger cities. They all longed for family reconnection, and the work that Toti offered allowed men to return to their wives and children. A friend and occasional event planner for OdA described how Toti used to encourage locals to come learn new skills and work with him, boosting their confidence in what they already knew: “Toti used to ask the locals: ‘what can you do?’ If the person answered: ‘I know how to install doors’, Toti would reply ‘so you know how to make picture frames. And if you know how to make picture frames, you know how to paint pictures. If you know how to paint pictures, you’re an artist”. We heard similar accounts from different interviewees during fieldwork.
Toti, himself, told us how he approached local capacities, of which Bichinho had plenty:
It all started with people coming by, looking for jobs. And I would ask “what can you do?”, [they would reply, for instance] “Embroidery”. (…) In this village, almost everyone was born here. So, they know how to embroider, they know how to grow vegetables, they know how to make shingles, they know how to build a house, they know how to do everything. Because we’re in the middle of nowhere. Well, it used to be far from everywhere. (…) There was no transportation. The bus used to come once a day. (…) So it wasn’t difficult to start the project here. It was well accepted. First thing: the community accepted it. (…) The gardener working here, I would look at his work and think “this guy is an artist”. So, I went up to him and asked “do you want to be a woodworker?”. Now, he is the best woodworker ever, he can make anything. (…) We have an [artisan] here who used to be a bricklayer and nowadays he does embroidery.
(Toti, social entrepreneur at OdA)
However, not everyone managed their transformation into successful artists well. Out of the many that went on to start their own businesses, some were taken by surprise with the financial results of their work: “For example, this boy who does this thing here, he used to ship containers [filled with his work] to the US. But then, just imagine, the young guy here in Bichinho, without any guidance. The family without any guidance. All of a sudden, there were dollars in his bank account. He spent it all on cocaine”.
With that as a cautionary tale, the question that becomes evident is “what are other underused capacities in Bichinho that can flourish with a fresh perspective? Are there underused institutions, buildings, equipment? How do we identify and help flourish their potentials, while preparing them to deal with success?”. One of our field participants mentioned local ruins from the colonial period that are currently being ransacked, instead of being preserved or restored to become touristic attractions:
[Showing photographs] these are signs of the gold colonial period. I think geotourists would be interested in seeing this. But this is deteriorating. (…) For example, they used to make tanks out of stone to wash the gold. They used to make vaults, to keep gold and diamonds safe. The walls are as thick as this table, and eight meter tall. (…) There are many ruins here. They are all taken for granted. (…) Now people are stealing those large rocks.
(Entrepreneur in Bichinho)
More local capacities could be identified and assessed with the help of new community champions, organized to promote encounters between insiders and outsiders, which may shed light onto latent local assets and strengths.
3.4. C Is for “Conveying Compelling Narratives”
Van Laer et al. [
41] posit that people need narratives to make sense of the world and of personal experiences. When these narratives are positive, they may help boost self-worth. Diochon and Anderson [
42] argue that narratives explain and communicate values, which, in turn, shape practices. Individuals and communities faced with long-term challenges may engage in fatalist and self-deprecating narratives [
43]. Therefore, it is important for place-based SEs to find and share positive stories about the community and its people, focusing on abundance instead of scarcity, in order to shape constructive practices.
As a research team, we were fascinated by the stories of transformation due to the help that Toti offered to local people regarding not only their homes and families but also their physical and mental health. However, when we presented him with our preliminary findings, we were taken aback by his request to suppress or reframe certain stories. Not because they were not true, but because we had framed them as stories of scarcity. For Toti, telling stories about what Bichinho’s residents did not have before his arrival may be embarrassing to them. The request was transmitted to us by a friend of Toti’s, who explained his stance towards life in general: “He is a person that always focuses on the positive side of things. Nothing good can come from emphasizing bad things from the past. (…) There are more important things to be said than that. (…) Toti prefers to say that OdA contributed to locals’ dignity. To women’s empowerment”.
After that request, we noticed how OdA’s works that are themed with social and environmental causes usually focus on the solution, and not on the problem. For example, pieces that speak about pollution or racism do not include these words, they include terms such as “breath”, “adopt”, “hope”, “silence”, and “we are all siblings”. Toti wants to tell compelling stories, trying to avoid self-defeating narratives. Another illustration of that was brought to us by a research participant who described art pieces created by Toti to celebrate the days that precede Easter Sunday, known in Brazil as “Semana Santa”, an important religious holiday particularly in Minas Gerais. Toti created a series of installations entitled “O Descanso” (translating into something like “The Relaxation”):
He bought a bunch of crucifixes and took Jesus off the crosses. He positioned Jesus sitting on a sofa, with his arms spread wide against the back of the sofa. He cut Jesus at the waist, and laid him down in a bathtub, arms outstretched on the sides of the tub. That is, he took Jesus out of the representation of suffering [into a representation of relaxation or enjoyment]. (…) The priest in Tiradentes prohibited the exhibition of the pieces during Semana Santa. He said it would be sacrilegious.
(Furniture designer and occasional OdA collaborator)
Among the many edifying biographies we encountered during fieldwork, there were accounts of not only mental and physical health improvements but also of financial prosperity that contributed to the overall well-being of specific individuals and their families, such as this one:
My life changed 200%. Toti helped me be recognized [as an artist]. Customers that arrived at Oficina de Agosto were sent here by Toti. “Oh, there is this former employee that does this sort of work, go there”. And I used to sell to Toti, and Toti sold to other people. Then I started selling on my own. (…) Toti built this studio for me. Then I was able to build on my own. I built ten more houses in Bichinho. The property where the gas station [is located] belongs to me. The other house as well. The house where Oficina de Agosto’s shop used to be. The other one belongs to my daughter. And all that came from [my work in my studio] here. (…) I rent them out for income. I built a gym and physiotherapy clinic for my daughter in Tiradentes.
(Former employee at OdA)
The story of Bichinho’s newer generation fascinates Toti himself:
Young people are following new paths, one wants to be a fashion designer, the other wants to work with tourism. Lili left Oficina to be a teacher. (…) I didn’t go to college. So going to college, for me, was something extraordinary. (…) [The new generation] is going to college. We are very proud. (…) But I think that starting with arts and crafts gives you good background experience. So, Oficina de Agosto is a starting point for different careers.
(Toti, social entrepreneur at OdA)
Besides those stories, we were able to identify many other compelling narratives in Bichinho. There is Toti and the power of an individual vision. There is the move from individual art to collective art. There is the generative nature of SE, in how it creates jobs, encourages entrepreneurship and ecosystem development, and confers dignity and hope. A managerial recommendation would be to create a community and visitors center, both online and bricks-and-mortar, to collect and exhibit these compelling narratives in a strategic community building effort. Partnering with private companies could bring the necessary financial resources, as exemplified by the Casa de Cultura de Paraty [
44] and the Casa Gallina in Mexico City [
37].
3.5. E Is for “Engaging Both/And Thinking”
Brazil has a long history of dualities, as mentioned in
Section 1.1. One of the most important anthropological treaties on Brazil owes its title specifically to one of those dualities: “The Masters and the Slaves” [
4]. Doing SE in Brazil might be particularly challenging, as the conflicting polarities onto which Brazilian culture was built meet the opposing forces inherent to all regenerative organizations. While it might be common to understand those opposing forces as either/or propositions with winners and losers, a patient both/and mindset might work as a fifth principle for community regeneration.
OdA’a success as an SE is largely based on both/and thinking. Toti was capable of extracting opportunity out of seemingly conflicting objectives: to better the community and, at the same time, make a profit. He did it by tirelessly trying to improve his employees’ individual and communal lives. He did it by assessing local capacities and helping needleworkers and construction workers transition into more profitable careers in the arts and crafts. He did it by channeling local beauty into expensive products that matched wealthy consumers’ interests, linking insiders with outsiders. He did it by focusing on positive narratives and on solutions, instead of dwelling in the past and on the problems. Above all, he did it by dismantling a hierarchical system through which Bichinho’s residents had been colonized, devalued, and silenced for centuries.
The 1990s in Brazil were times of economic prosperity, with the population’s upward mobility and increased buying power that resulted from Plano Real, a set of measures taken to stabilize the economy, which were capable of taming inflation [
45]. With the extra income, many Brazilians entered new consumption arenas, such as home decor. At the same time, Brazil lived a cultural movement of national identity building and started to take pride in its handicraft and folk art, with production centers gaining visibility all over the country [
3]. These jointed characteristics of the economic and the cultural macro-environments facilitated OdA’s success and allowed the SE to charge premium prices that, in turn, enabled Toti to invest back in those individuals who had embraced his project, especially the women striving in a rural village that had been deserted by men. Thus, instead of choosing either a social or an economic business objective, OdA was able to practice both.
Colonial and baroque art and architecture are very present in Minas Gerais. The juxtaposition of contemporary or innovative aesthetics with traditional styles is not as common in Brazil as it is in many European countries. Thus, it is hard for Brazilians to wrap their heads around the introduction of contemporary architecture in rustic or colonial environments, such as Bichinho. The either/or mentality seems to guide locals’ perception of contemporary architecture as something that “has nothing to do with Bichinho”, such as when one of our informants criticized the arrival of different types of businesses, including an inn constructed out of containers, which, in other contexts, could be seen as an environmentally conscious initiative:
I see a growing interest in Bichinho. But not just the small artisan who makes his art in the back yard and then opens up a small door [in the front of his house to sell it]. We’re starting to see something different happening. I don’t know if this is good. I prefer Bichinho the way it was before I came to live here. You start seeing buildings that have nothing to do with the place. I like adobe [constructions], I like wood. I like white façades with blue, or green doors, you know, the colonial [style]. And even the simplest people here valued it [the colonial style]. You start to see things that are simpler and uglier, I think. Stuff made of containers, for example. I’m not against it, but I wouldn’t build something like that. I think Bichinho is transforming, I don’t know if that’s going to be good. People start to show up, selling things that have nothing to do with Bichinho’s history. Even Chinese products.
(Entrepreneur in Bichinho)
Brazil seems to lack a culture of architectural preservation that mixes the old and the new, perhaps due to the overly conservative rules adopted for a long time by the National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN), which used to perceive historical towns, especially the ones in Minas Gerais, as immutable monuments, as art pieces no one should touch [
46]. Although more recent perspectives may have moved from towns as monuments to towns as attractions [
47], the attempts to introduce contemporary elements into traditional constructions in Brazil may still be received with resistance and controversy. Therefore, to build both/and thinking in aesthetics and design will be an extra challenge in Bichinho.
Slawinski et al. [
11] found that the high prices charged by Shorefast’s commercial initiatives, the Fogo Island Inn and the Fogo Island Shop, awakened in the locals a new appreciation for their own heritage, since tourists valued the service and products that had been planned in accordance to the place’s traditions, and therefore were willing to spend a considerable amount of money to live the Fogo Island experience. Our fieldwork has indicated, so far, that, besides creating jobs and income opportunities for its employees, for other Bichinho residents, and for new entrepreneurs, OdA has also boosted morale, increased well-being, and contributed to a whole range of positive feelings. We did not see, however, an expression of renewed pride in the place arising from OdA’s high prices. The expensive prices charged by OdA do not seem to trickle down to its employees in the form of a renewed sense of ownership towards local beauty and capacities. Among former employees there seems to be an understanding that their brand is not as strong as OdA’s, and therefore they cannot charge the same high prices, such as in the following account:
[Why doesn’t OdA let you sign the pieces?] So that the name of the person who made it won’t show. Otherwise, instead of buying from OdA, people would look for us directly. Things are expensive there. With us, it would be cheaper. (…) Because they have a brand. For some people, their dream is to own a branded piece from OdA. The art pieces are considerably expensive there.
(Former employee at OdA)
On top of that, there is the generalized concern regarding the country’s economic situation, which also pushes everyone’s prices and sales down.
In the next section, we will first compare OdA’s case to other SEs. Then we will discuss external threats and internal weaknesses that have been disturbing both feelings and practicalities at OdA and Bichinho. From there, we will debate Barbosa’s [
3] view on OdA’s current purpose. Finally, we will proceed to suggest ways of addressing place paradoxes and problems that currently affect OdA and other local SEs.
5. Conclusions
Combining the methods of ethnography and ABR, under an inductive–deductive perspective, this study had the objectives of analyzing the catalytic role of OdA in Bichinho’s economic and cultural revitalization; discussing the local conditions that set the SE to success; understanding the importance of place, entrepreneurial ecosystems, local perspectives, and processes; identifying OdA’s forces but also its boundaries, limitations, and challenges; and providing managerial recommendations that may help entrepreneurs in Bichinho deal with the tensions that emerge from the juxtaposition of the social and the economic, the traditional and the contemporary, the local and the global, and the insider and the outsider.
In an attempt to reach said objectives, this study, first, told the story of how OdA was installed in Bichinho, describing its historical antecedents and its social and economic consequences. Then, following the P.L.A.C.E. model, we commented on the social entrepreneur’s role as a community champion and uncovered the need for promoting new champions. Important links between outsiders and insiders were identified, especially the ones brought about by the social entrepreneur under focus, who was capable of connecting local artisans with his former big city clientele. Assessing local capacities was one of the main reasons for OdA’s success, since Bichinho’s dwellers were needleworkers and construction workers, willing to learn new skills to improve their well-being and family ties. The place’s natural beauty was also a local strength potentialized by OdA’s entrepreneur, who included it in the SE’s aesthetic repertoire. Compelling narratives were found among current and former employees, always framed by the entrepreneur in a positive, constructive light. Finally, OdA’s growth was built on both/and thinking, fostered by a prosperous economic and cultural macroenvironment in the 1990s. Now, with repeated crises, including the recent pandemic, a both/and approach does not seem to flourish as easily as before; however, it may still be the solution to current business and societal challenges.
As a context-bound contribution, this study suggested business and community practices based on long-term patience, non-hierarchical relationships, and a constant effort to adopt both/and thinking. Nevertheless, we do not wish to frame all the ideas contained in our managerial recommendations as ours. This is a non-extractivist research that intends to work as a repository and vehicle for the ideas that were already latent among our informants (the real owners of great part of the information herein divulged), while providing new insights that sprouted from our own interpretive analysis of data. We tried to protect their identities, not labeling quotes with participants’ names whenever possible. It is not our intention to claim authorship of our informants’ suggestions, and we would like to give them all the credit they deserve, but without exposing their identities when they talked about sensitive topics.
The context-transferable conclusions we have arrive at are three-fold: (1) as previous studies have shown, social enterprise may indeed work as an alternative market model that could support community building; (2) social enterprises’ initial social focus may not be perennial or unshakeable, which might require both/and thinking and a patient management of paradoxes; and (3) the managerial recommendations herein offered might be extended to other businesses in Bichinho, in other semi-rural Brazilian towns, or even in international settings that might bear economic and social resemblance to our researched context. Future research could try to explain how social enterprise, as an alternative market model, may impact traditional business models, either in the context of semi-rural towns or in larger cities.
The main limitation of this study has to do with the access to OdA’s current employees. We have framed them as important subjects of the larger study of which the present article is a part, but, so far, we have only interviewed one of them (see
Table 1). Future steps in our project include ABR-based interviews with artists currently working at OdA. Since we propose a patient both/and approach to knowledge building, we believe that future investigations of Bichinho’s SEs, including our own, should work with long-term in loco participant observation.