Geographical indication and centrality in the Brazilian Northeast

Abstract

This article discusses the subject of Geographical Indication and level of centrality, by using the hierarchization of municipalities from the Brazilian Northeast region as a tool for discussion and analysis. This article is mainly aimed at hierarchizing municipalities from the Brazilian Northeast region by taking into account their respective contributions to the development of non-public service products between 2002 and 2017, considering five geographical subdivisions (microregion, mesoregion, State, region and country) in the perspective of identifying the level of centrality and a relationship with Geographical Indications. This work is characterised as an exploratory-descriptive research with a quali-quantitative approach, having analysed data from the Automatic Recovery System (SIDRA, in Portuguese) from IBGE (the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) and considering 1,792 municipalities from the Brazilian Northeast. The results indicate that among the 1,792 municipalities included in the study, 1,028 (57.4% of all municipalities studied) observed an increase to their scores. In addition, the main changes that took place in these municipalities between 2002 and 2017 included the increase in the homogeneity in the region, when regarding the profile of participation in the development of non-public service products from higher geographical subdivisions. With that, it can be stated that the non-public service sector creates a level of hierarchy in the municipalities from the Brazilian Northeast in terms of their volumes, corroborating the assumption drawn in this work that the spatial layout of cities has an effect on the centralities of places, with the territory and its centrality level having an impact on Geographical Indications, as the quality and standardization of products/services represent the result of the combined effort and actions carried out by some groups of local producers in certain territories. This highlights the relationship between this group and the local tradition, typicality and culture, as well as with the physical and climate aspects of the territory, which contributes to its local development.