Actions that impact the natural environment have overcome national barriers and their reflexes can be noticed at the global level. It is thus a duty of national governments to implement policies for sustainable development in the face of the many environmental, social and economic challenges that are mounting. Thus, discussions about environmental protection, eradication of poverty and equitable distribution of income are strengthened.
In this context, through public policies, the Brazilian State has sought to stimulate the involvement of civil society and the government itself in favor of sustainable development. In this scenario, the relevance of public contracting stands out.
Taking as a reference the significant purchasing power of the Brazilian government, which represented 20.2% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2014 and considering that GDP reached approximately U$ 1,5 trillion in that year, defining the way in which it will use the public resource, the government has in its hands the power to mobilize an entire productive chain.
Thus, in 2010, the legislation that regulates government hiring has undergone an alteration that determined that the bids made within the scope of the Brazilian public administration must have, for one of its purposes, the promotion of sustainable national development. However, almost a decade after the mentioned change, the data reveal that there are still incipient procurement administrative that considerin their processes the category "sustainability".
Exemplifying the case of the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ), a public organization located in the State of Rio de Janeiro - Brazil, from 2012 to 2016, 1,752 procurement processes were carried out, however, the percentage of purchases that included the purchase of items not reached 1% of the total. During the same period, 209 contracts were signed, but none contemplated the acquisition of sustainable items. Thus, it is concluded that despite the legal requirement for public contracting to promote national sustainable development, we can see that this initiative still seems very incipient.
Thus, it can be deduced that the category "sustainability" is not consensual and that there may be different interpretations of this reality. Therefore, it is inferred that there are cultural and symbolic boundaries between the institutional actors responsible for such hiring and this can result in a distinct understanding of sustainability in spite of the legislation and regulations in force, thus creating a research opportunity. It should be noted that despite the importance of institutional actors in this process of implementing sustainable public contracting, an inexpressive amount of studies was identified that considered the perception of such actors specifically on the sustainability category.
Thus, the objective is to carry out a qualitative research, characterized as a case study, which is oriented by a sociological and anthropological relational view, and aims to understand the exotic in what is familiar, through the analysis of webs of meanings built by institutional actors responsible for procurement processes at UFRRJ. The methodological resources employed include fieldwork, participant observation, the use of semi-structured interviews and bibliographic research.
