**2. Methods**

Humanity has always discussed food's origins, as well as its market and intrinsic human relations. However, all scientific approaches to debates regarding food are significantly recent. Many works have been conducted to reveal the engines of markets and how they operate, from seeding, to commerce and, lastly, consuming habits. Nevertheless, few studies have sought to understand the sociological issues of agri-food market construction. Thus, this work aims at providing explanations of agri-food market construction based on critical theory.

To achieve the proposed objectives, this paper dialectically analyzes the formation of agri-food systems. The analysis was carried out through the temporal reconstruction of the forms used by humanity in agriculture, exposing the sociological and economic concepts for these phases, and confronting them with the involvement of institutions in shaping these systems. From the perspective of the critical theory of sociology, this work shows the forms of construction of existing systems, and points to the reasons for such conformation. The choice of critical theory as an analytical path is based on the explanatory capacity of historical materialism.

For this work to face and fulfill the task of conceptually discussing the institutional mechanisms that exert influence and establish hegemonic visions of agrarian development, it is necessary to set the adopted parameters. Since this is not a literature review, the references do not follow a specific timeframe or database. Thus, the work is divided into the following themes: agri-food systems, the economics of agriculture, rural and economic sociology, globalization impacts, and agri-food markets. This thematic separation is crucial for selecting the works consulted. The different aspects that influence the deep analytical perspectives that permeate the hegemonic common sense are noticeable and differentiable. In each subsection, the basic concepts of the subject are presented, followed by its agrarian application and a discussion of how CT can be applied to it. Thus, this work must be understood as not just the sum of its parts, but the exponential result of its embeddedness. Therefore, each subject's key works, precursors, or transformers were approached for conceptual discussion, touching on the necessary essence of each subject, without losing the significance of the dialectics.

The investigation of markets without due consideration of their complexity can result in risky mistakes. It is crucial, then, to consider the peculiarities of production systems, such as the historical and cultural consumption aspects that influence this market. This, centered on critical arguments, demonstrates how agricultural systems of food production and commerce develop from different agrarian systems according to hegemonic interests and the embeddedness of institutions and elites.

In order to properly approach this issue and understand the functioning of modern agri-food markets, the main aspects needed to be discussed. Thus, this paper is divided into two main sections:

The first section regards the agricultural systems of production; it starts by detailing the cultivated system's influences and the social productive system, as well as their consequences for the products. Then, by structuring the systems, the work goes through the history of agri-food production, establishing a notion of intrinsic societal relations and food functions. Subsequently, with a historical construction of changes in productivity logic, the paper works through the transformation of food's cultural and functional roles in society.

The second section regards the main aspects of critical theory and institutions. The approaches of specific literature to the matter are vital to a thorough comprehension of the subject. As markets are social constructs [17–20], they must not be understood only as a matter of supply and demand. Moreover, the more complex the relations of the social networks and the actors involved in the construction of the market, the more factors must be taken into account.

As such, within the second section, this work presents an economic approach based on classical economics, political economy, and economic sociology. In terms of classical economics, this work presents the main concepts of competition—vital for market comprehension. Subsequently, this paper considers political economy as a tool for agricultural market analysis; it includes other elements in a macro-level approach, allowing a broader vision of reality, such as supply chains [21], value chains [22–24], and political factors [25,26]. In the last part of the section, this paper addresses economic sociology and discusses agrifood markets. This is an approach that attempts to understand the multifactorial influence of performance [27–29], networks [17,30,31], and institutional perspectives [32–35].

In the last part of the section, agricultural systems are confronted by critical and institutional theory. In this way, each approach gives a more explicit meaning to analysis according to agri-food production's evolution. By doing so, this paper aims to analyze how markets' development represents the interests of elites in each region.
