State and education: the challenge to enlarge citizenship

O artigo aborda o tema da participação como um processo continuado de democratização da gestão da educação. Está estruturado em três partes. Inicialmente, desenvolve-se uma reflexão sobre o conceito de participação em suas diversas dimensões e possibilidades. A segunda parte enfoca os públicos participativos no Brasil privilegiando a institucionalização das relações entre o Estado e a sociedade civil. A terceira parte se centra nas possibilidades de construção de espaços de inovação institucional. As experiências explicitam a existência/inexistência de um potencial de ruptura em torno da distância quase sempre presente entre o poder centralizado e as realidades sociais mutantes e heterogêneas. Isto põe em evidência os limites dos mecanismos existentes formais, verticais, corporativos e clientelistas, construídos para permitir/impedir a participação dos cidadãos nos assuntos públicos. O principal desafio está em fortalecer espaços deliberativos e a modernização dos instrumentos de gestão e de articulação. Para tanto, requer-se uma engenharia sócio-institucional pautada pela premissa da superação das barreiras socioinstitucionais existentes e o necessário fortalecimento na sociedade de políticas pautadas pela inclusão da noção de interesse geral. Isto se potencializa na medida em que o tema da cidadania é assumido como um ponto nodal para a institucionalização da participação dos cidadãos em processos decisórios de interesse público no contexto das políticas educacionais, assim como aquelas que com ela se relacionam e são interdependentes.The article approaches the theme of participation as a continuous process of democratization of educational administration. It is structured in three parts. Initially it develops an analysis on the concept of participation in its diverse dimensions and possibilities. The second part focuses on a participatory public in Brazil with emphasis in the institutionalization of the relations between State and Civil Society. The third part concentrates on the possibilities of constructing areas of institutional innovation. Experiences indicate the existence/inexistence of a potential rupture of the existing distance, which almost always presents a centralized power and mutant and heterogeneous social realities. This puts into evidence the limits of existing mechanisms; formal, vertical, corporative and clientelistic, which were built to allow/prevent the participation of citizens in public issues. The main challenge is to strengthen deliberative areas and modernize the instruments of management and articulation. Thus, socio-institutional engineering is required based on the premise to overcome of the existing socio-institutional barriers and the necessary development within society of public policies centered on the notion of general interest. This may be promoted as the theme of citizenship and is considered very relevant towards the effective institutionalization of participation of citizens in the decision making processes of public interest within educational policies, and as well as those that are related to and intertwined with it

Governing complexity and environmental justice: lessons from the water crisis in Metropolitan São Paulo (2013-2015)

The paper presents a discussion on the water crisis that occurred between 2013 and 2015 in the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo, the lack of integrated natural resources planning, and the reaction of social actors affected by the crisis. The region was affected by an extreme hydrological and climatological event, which was combined with the unsustainable management of water resources. The paper addresses, initially, the dynamics of water governance in the region, and the main aspects related to water availability and climate dependence that caused the water crisis. Then, we present an analysis of the process that led to the water crisis and its main developments, which is based on the follow-up of the different moments of the crisis and dialogues with its relevant stakeholders. The results indicate the relevance of emphasizing issues on matters such as the lack of transparency and highlight the role of societal initiatives. We conclude the paper with a proposition to discuss governance processes that can contribute to the development of more effective initiatives in order to reduce the impact of this visible change in water regimes, strengthen transparent management, and promote a more democratic interaction between social actors and the government

Gestão de resíduos sólidos em São Paulo: desafios da sustentabilidade

O presente trabalho aborda o cenário brasilero, da Região Metropolitana de São Paulo e da cidade de São Paulo em relação à gestão integrada e sustentável de resíduos sólidos urbanos, apontando os principais avanços, retrocessos e desafios. Destaca-se o importante papel da universalização da coleta seletiva com inclusão de catadores de materiais recicláveis na cidade de São Paulo como estratégia para promover sustentabilidade socioambiental urbana.This paper presents the scenario related to urban solid waste at the national level, metropolitan São Paulo and São Paulo pointing the main advances, backlashes and challenges. The emphasis is on the important role of the universalization of selective waste collection with the inclusion of waste pickers of recyclable materials within the city of São Paulo as a strategy to promote socioenvironmental urban sustainability

Environmental governance and social learning: towards more reflexive interactions

Facing the increasing complexity of social and environmental issues, environmental governance configurations are required to adopt increasingly collaborative strategies and reflexive learning oriented practices. The goal of this paper is to present a theoretical discussion about environmental governance and the contribution of the social learning approach to expand the reflexivity potential of multi-stakeholder interaction spaces in governance processes. We argue that social learning practices, understood as interactive and reflective, can broaden the critical responsiveness of participating in environmental governance systems. Social learning-oriented processes are based on the promotion of dialogic spaces in which participants can learn from the diverse views present in the group and critically reflect on the assumptions that underlie decision making, thus creating possibilities for the emergence of innovative practices and new social configurations. We conclude that social learning processes driven by the stakeholders interactions in environmental governance spaces tend to broaden the ability of participants to critically evaluate the governance structure itself, in order to foster arrangements that can effectively promote practices for sustainability

Alignments between e-waste legislation and the sustainable development goals: the United Kingdom, Brazil, and Ghana case studies

The first two decades of the 21st century had a significant increase in e-waste generation. While improper recycling technologies applied to this type of waste pose severe risks to the environment and human health, several e-waste management legislation has been recently enforced worldwide, reaching 78 countries and covering 71% of the global population. In common, most of them aim to recycle minerals and plastic from the disposed waste of electric and electronic equipment (WEEE) to reinsert them in the industry, promoting the so-called circular economy. From the comparative case study of countries that integrate the world-system in different social and economic conditions-the United Kingdom (as core or developed country), Brazil (as semi-periphery or emergent country), and Ghana (as periphery or developing country)-, this article aims to understand to what extent the national legislation on e-waste management in these territories align with the Sustainable Development Goals 3, 6, 8, 11, 12, 14, and 15. This research has an exploratory approach and is methodologically structured as a controlled comparison of most different cases. Results reveal that selected legislation has different levels of alignment with SDG, ranging from generic mentions of social-environmental topics to description of legal instruments to be enforced regarding environmental preservation, improvement of population's life quality, and changes in the unsustainable production, consumption, and disposal patterns. The article also seeks to contribute to the geographical debate by establishing the relation between e-waste legislation and SDG, considering the territorial particularities of the case studies

Teacher education and citizenship: school projects in environmental studies

Este texto pretende apresentar reflexões resultantes de um estudo de doutorado focado na análise, por meio da pesquisa-ação, de projetos escolares de educação ambiental desenvolvidos a partir da formação continuada de professores em exercício, e suas contribuições na constituição de novos conhecimentos e procedimentos didático-pedagógicos para o estudo do ambiente e o exercício da cidadania. Visando à construção do olhar geocientífico na escola, os projetos de educação ambiental utilizaram diferentes práticas de campo para o (re)conhecimento do lugar de estudo associadas a recursos de sensoriamento remoto (imagens de satélite, fotos aéreas e mapas), objetivando a construção de uma visão integrada da realidade socioambiental a partir do estabelecimento de relações dialéticas entre o local e o global como suporte à análise de problemas, de suas repercussões e implicações em diferentes escalas de observação. O desenvolvimento dos projetos oportunizou a formação de professores-pesquisadores inovadores, críticos e reflexivos ante as realidades escolar e socioambiental. Além disso, propiciou aos alunos condições para observarem e conhecerem seu meio ambiente e o lugar em que vivem, refletirem sobre suas condições reais e, com base nesse processo, proporem ações e construir em intervenções educativas diante dos problemas estudados, em busca de soluções. Ao incorporar a questão socioambiental à prática pedagógica, os projetos escolares buscaram inserir a escola na realidade, contribuindo para a formação, por meio da aprendizagem social, de cidadãos críticos e participativos em ações conjuntas e colaborativas (escola, comunidade, poder público), visando ao desenvolvimento de políticas públicas democráticas e sustentáveis para a melhoria da qualidade de vida.This text seeks to present reflections resulting from a doctorate research focused on the analysis, through action-research, of school projects in environmental education developed as part of in-service teacher education, and their contributions to the constitution of new knowledges and didactic-pedagogical procedures for the study of the environment and for the exercise of citizenship. Aiming at the construction of the geo-scientific perspective at school, the environmental education projects made use of different field practices based on remote sensing (satellite images, aerial photography and maps) to (re)cover knowledge from the place of study, with the purpose of building an integrated view of the socio-environmental reality based on the establishment of dialectic relations between the local and the global as a support to the analysis of problems, of their repercussions and implications on different scales of observation. The development of the projects created the opportunity to form teacher-researchers that are innovators, critical, and reflective before the school and socio-environmental realities. Besides, it gave students the conditions to observe and know their own environment and the place where they live, to reflect upon their real situations and, based on this process, propose actions and construct educative interventions in search of solutions for the problems investigated. By incorporating the socio-environmental issue to the pedagogical practice, the school projects attempted to insert school into reality, contributing to form critical citizens that participate in joint and collaborative actions (school, community, public authorities) through social learning, aiming at the development of democratic and sustainable public policies to improve the quality of life

ESTADO CAPITALISTA: TRANSFORMAÇÕES NA DINÂMICA DE INTERVENÇÃO E O PAPEL DAS BUROCRACIAS

This article constitutes an effort to define the conceptual framework for the analysis of elements constituting the dynamics of State intervention. The author questions the pertinence to peripheric capitalism of theories elaborated within the context of advanced capitalism for the analysis of the caracter of social policies in Brazil after 1964. The objective here is to clarify certain questions relative to the implementation of policies in a bureaucratic-authoritarian context, to the changes at the intervention level and to the role played by bureaucracies in the definition of social policiesCet article essaye de definir le cadre conceptuel qui permette de capter quelques éléments constitutifs de la dynamique de I’intervention de I’Etat. L’au- teur chergue à vérifier la pertinence, pour le capitalisme périphérique, de theories élaborées dans le contexte du capitalisme avancé pour analyser le caractè- re des politiques sociales au Brésil après 1964. L’objectif est d’aprrofondir cer- taines questions concernant la mise en oeuvre des politiques dans un contexte bureaucratique-autoritaire, les transformations au niveau de I’intervention et le rôle joué par les bureaucraties dans la définition des politiques socialesEsse artigo apresenta uma tentativa de explicitar um marco conceituai, que possibilite captar alguns elementos constitutivos da dinâmica da intervenção estatal. O autor procura verificar a pertinência, para o capitalismo periférico, de teorias elaboradas no contexto do capitalismo avançado para analisar o caráter das políticas sociais no Brasil pós-64. O objetivo é aprofundar questões relativas à implementação das políticas no contexto burocrático-autoritário, às transformações no plano da intervenção e ao papel das burocracias na definição das políticas sociais

State and Education: the challenge to enlarge citizenship

O artigo aborda o tema da participação como um processo continuado dedemocratização da gestão da educação. Está estruturado em três partes.Inicialmente, desenvolve-se uma reflexão sobre o conceito de participaçãoem suas diversas dimensões e possibilidades. A segunda parte enfoca ospúblicos participativos no Brasil privilegiando a na institucionalização dasrelações entre o Estado e a sociedade civil. A terceira parte se centra naspossibilidades de construção de espaços de inovação institucional. As experiênciasexplicitam a existência/inexistência de um potencial de rupturaem torno da distância quase sempre presente entre o poder centralizado eas realidades sociais mutantes e heterogêneas. Isto põe em evidência oslimites dos mecanismos existentes formais, verticais, corporativos e clientelistas,construídos para permitir/impedir a participação dos cidadãosnos assuntos públicos. O principal desafio está em fortalecer espaçosdeliberativos e a modernização dos instrumentos de gestão e de articulação.Para tanto, requer-se uma engenharia sócio-institucional pautadapela premissa da superação das barreiras socioinstitucionais existentes e onecessário fortalecimento na sociedade de políticas pautadas pela inclusãoda noção de interesse geral. Isto se potencializa na medida em que o temada cidadania é assumido como um ponto nodal para a institucionalizaçãoda participação dos cidadãos em processos decisórios de interesse públicono contexto das políticas educacionais, assim como aquelas que com elase relacionam e são interdependentes.The article approaches the theme of participation as a continuous processof democratization of educational administration. It is structured in threeparts. Initially it develops an analysis on the concept of participation inits diverse dimensions and possibilities. The second part focuses on aparticipatory public in Brazil with emphasis in the institutionalization of therelations between State and Civil Society. The third part concentrates on thepossibilities of constructing areas of institutional innovation. Experiencesindicate the existence/inexistence of a potential rupture of the existingdistance, which almost always presents a centralized power and mutantand heterogeneous social realities. This puts into evidence the limits ofexisting mechanisms; formal, vertical, corporative and clientelistic, whichwere built to allow/prevent the participation of citizens in public issues.The main challenge is to strengthen deliberative areas and modernize theinstruments of management and articulation. Thus, socio-institutionalengineering is required based on the premise to overcome of the existingsocio-institutional barriers and the necessary development within societyof public policies centered on the notion of general interest. This maybe promoted as the theme of citizenship and is considered very relevanttowards the effective institutionalization of participation of citizens in thedecision making processes of public interest within educational policies,and as well as those that are related to and intertwined with it