[5] In 1995, Abramovay did a two-year study program at the Foundation Nationale des Sciences Politiques and worked with Ignacy Sachs in a research about the role of rural areas and agriculture for the process of development.
Both in economically developed nations of recent colonization (USA and Canada), and in others with secular peasant traditions (Continental Europe) an atomized sector operates in millions of productive agricultural units orchestrated by the planning, command and control of the State and professional organizations.
The existence of the "peasantry" presupposes a set of social ties given by tradition, by the community, by personalized relations of dependence and equality, and incomplete and partial integration in the market.
For Abramovay, markets came to be seen as forms of social coordination characterized by conflicts, dependencies, structures and unpredictabilities that are very distant from the canonical image enshrined in Walras' general equilibrium theory.
[11] As professor of economic sociology at the University of São Paulo, Abramovay has been responsible for disseminating the works of Harrison White, Mark Granovetter, Richard Swedberg and thinkers in the tradition of Karl Polanyi.
[12] In 2018, Ricardo Abramovay founded the Center for Ethics, Technology and Digital Economies at the Institute of Energy and Environment of the University of São Paulo.